India deadliest place in world for girl child
Sudhir-Architect
India deadliest place in world for girl child
NEW DELHI: It's official - India is the
most dangerous place in the world to be a baby girl. Newly released data shows
that an Indian girl child aged
1-5 years is 75% more likely to die than an Indian boy, making this the worst
gender differential in child mortality
for any country in the world.
Infant (0-1 years) and child (1-5 years) mortality are declining in India and across the world, though not as fast
as was hoped in India.
Simultaneously, most of the world is experiencing a faster fall in female
infant and child mortality than in male, on account of well established
biological factors which make girls better survivors of early infancy given
equal access to resources. The world's two most populous countries, however, buck
this trend.
Newly released United
Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs ( UN-DESA) data for
150 countries over 40 years shows that India
and China
are the only two countries in the world where female infant mortality is higher
than male infant mortality in the 2000s. In China, there are 76 male infant
deaths for every 100 female infant deaths compared with 122 male infant deaths
for every 100 female infant deaths in the developing world as a whole.
The released data has found that India
has a better infant
mortality sex ratio than China,
with 97 male infant deaths for every 100 female, but this is still not in tune
with the global trend, or with its neighbours Sri Lanka (125)
or Pakistan
(120).
When it comes to the child mortality sex ratio, however, India is far
and away the world's worst. In the 2000s, there were 56 male child deaths for
every 100 female, compared with 111 in the developing world. This ratio has got
progressively worse since the 1970s in India,
even as Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Egypt
and Iraq improved.
The UN report is clear that high girl child mortality is explained by
socio-cultural values. So strong is the biological advantage for girls in early
childhood that higher mortality among girls should be seen as "a powerful
warning that differential treatment or access to resources is putting girls at
a disadvantage", the report says.
"Higher female mortality from age 1 onwards clearly indicated sustained
discrimination," says P Arokiasamy, professor of development studies at
Mumbai's International
Institute for Population Studies, who has studied gender differentials in
child mortality in India.
"Such neglect and discrimination can be in three areas: food and
nutrition, healthcare and emotional wellbeing. Of these, neglect of the
healthcare of the girl child is the most direct determinant of mortality,"
says Arokisamy. Studies have shown that health-related neglect may involve
waiting longer before taking a sick girl to a doctor than a sick boy, and is
also reflected in lower rates of immunization for girls than boys.
Moreover, since the outrage over India's poor child sex ratio came
out of census data for children aged 0-6 years, the UN data on child mortality
indicates that a campaign against female foeticide alone is not a complete
solution. "Pre-natal and post-natal discrimination are complementarily
contributing to gender imbalance," agrees Dr Arokiasamy. While pre-natal
discrimination in the form of sex-selective abortions is more common among
better educated upper income households, post-natal discrimination or neglect
is more common among poorer, less educated rural households, he adds.
Thanks & Regards,
Sudhir Srinivasan
B.Arch, MSc.CPM, Dip.ID, Dip.CAD, Dip.PM
| Architect |