• India had more deaths among children under five than any other country in 2015, a Lancet study has found.
• The researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US analysed state-level Indian data on the causes of death among children under five for the years 2000-2015.

BACKGROUND:

• India reduced annual mortality among children under five from 2.5 million in 2000 (90.5 per 1,000 live births) to 1.2 million in 2015 (out of 2.5 million live births, or 47.8 per 1,000), it was still the highest in the world.
• Among the states, the highest mortality rate, in Assam at 73.1 per 1,000, was more than seven times that in Goa’s 9.7. Among the regions, the mortality rate ranged from a low of 29.7 per 1,000 (South) to 63.8 (Northeast).
• The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) set in 2000 was to reduce the under-five mortality rate in 2015 to one-third of the 1990 figure. For India, that would have meant reducing the under-five mortality rate to 39 deaths per 1,000 live births.