Times of India
New Delhi, May 8: For a country crowing about its cracking growth rate, here is a fact that should make its head hang in shame. Over 53% children in India under five years - that is, 67 million - live without basic healthcare facilities.
This means that India alone accounts for about one-third of all children in the world aged below five who don't have basic healthcare.
In turn, it also means that poor children in India, along with those in Brazil and Egypt, are three times more likely to die before their fifth birthday than children in other parts of the world.
According to the latest global report card, which examined 55 countries that together account for 59% of the world’s under-five population and 83% of the deaths among these children, India ranks 27th along with Ghana and Eritrea when it comes to providing basic healthcare to its children, which includes life-saving interventions like prenatal care, skilled childbirth, immunization and treatment for diarrhoea and pneumonia.
The report - 'State of the World’s Mothers' - brought out by global humanitarian organisation Save the Children, says India is seeing alarming inequalities with respect to health services reaching the poorest child and the wealthiest.
The report's says that while 66% of the poorest children in India receive no or minimal healthcare, the number stands at 31% of well-off children, who are not covered.
The report also points to worrying survival gaps for girls. It says girls die here at much higher rates than boys, with gender gaps constantly widening. Indian girls are 61% more likely than boys to die between the ages of one and five. In other words, for every five boys who die, eight girls die.
"India has the world’s largest gender survival gap. While India has cut its overall child mortality rate by 34% since 1990, the survival gap between girls and boys has widened," the report says.
According to the report, the main reason for the gender gap in India is inequity of healthcare for female and male children. Girls are often brought to health facilities in more advanced states of illnesses than boys and taken to less qualified doctors as well.
In India, less money is spent on girls’ health compared with boys. As a result, girls are less likely to receive the medicines and treatment they need. The report refers to Punjab where expenditure on healthcare during the first two years of life was 2.3 times greater for sons than for daughters.
"In India, doctors for the wealthy are plentiful but poor people often do not get the care they need. Over one million deaths of children under five occur annually in the first month of life in India," the report says.
According to experts, if the full package of essential healthcare were provided to children, 6.1 million children’s lives would be saved each year.
"If every country in the world were to close its own survival gap, 40% of all under-five deaths would be prevented and 3.9 million lives saved. Nearly 20% of the global deaths could be prevented by closing survival gaps in India and Nigeria alone, two of the world's most inequitable countries that also have very large populations. This would mean 1.1 million children's life saved in India alone," the report says.
Globally, more than 200 million children under five years do not get basic healthcare, leading to nearly 10 million deaths annually from treatable ailments.
In Ethiopia and Chad, the two lowest ranked countries in the report card, more than 80% of children did not receive basic life saving healthcare. The Philippines, with 31% of children under five missing out on basic healthcare, is the highest ranked country.