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India and China, Way Behind: UNICEF

Without better healthcare, Asia-Pacific's 13 countries would struggle hard to reduce child mortality and maternal mortality rates by two-thirds, a target which the UN has earmarked as health Millennium Development Goals

India and China need to pace up on the healthcare front to help the world achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), says UNICEF report. The report titled 'State of the Asia Pacific's Children Report-2008', suggests, "It is a fundamental truth that unless India achieves major improvements in health, nutrition, water and sanitation, education, gender equality and child protection, global efforts to reach the MDGs will fail." China also needs to make significant strides to regain early progress it made in child survival. "Global achievement of the health related MDGs depend largely on India's achievement and China's accelerating progress," mentions the report.

Without better healthcare, Asia-Pacific's 13 countries would struggle hard to reduce child mortality and maternal mortality rates by two-thirds, a target which the UN has earmarked as health MDG. At least 2.5 million child deaths occur in these two countries every year- accounting for nearly a third of all child deaths in the world. While 2.1 million children die in India every year, the number is 415,000 in China.

In India, the maternal mortality rate is very high as well with at least 301 mothers out of every 100,000 dying during childbirth. Child survival, regarded by UNICEF as a key test of a nation's progress in human development and child rights, has improved considerably. "But these gains have been overshadowed by deepening disparities, which means that healthcare often fails to reach the poorest," mentions the report. The report underlines a unhealthy trend across the region - the public health expenditure remains well below the world average of 5.1 per cent of the GDP. While South Asia including India spends only 1.1 per cent of GDP on health, it is 1.9 per cent in the rest of Asia-Pacific. "The divide between rich and poor is rising at a troubling rate within sub-regions of Asia-Pacific, leaving a large number of mothers and children at the risk of increasing relative poverty and consistent exclusion from primary healthcare services," the report said. Pneumonia, diarrhoea and malnutrition are identified as the major causes of child death in India. While taking note of the low prevalence of infant birth in hospitals, underweight mothers are making the situation more complex. In India, one of every three woman is underweight, putting them at risk of having low-birth weight infants and these babies are 20 times more likely to die in infancy than healthy babies, highlights the report. "As the world has moved beyond the halfway benchmark and into the final lap towards the MDGs with a 2015 goal, what is needed now is political will and sound strategies to dramatically increase investment in public health services that specifically target the poorest and most marginalised," it said. The UNICEF report emphasises over the fact that countries like India must increase their public health expenditure by two more per cent of its GDP to boost healthcare facilities for the underprivileged.

EH News Bureau