Despite progress in researches in medical science and discovery of new methods of curing diseases, the problem of pre-term deaths of new born babies up to the age of 5 remains in place. A global study on pre-term death among children up to five years of age has been conducted by the researchers of John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Common causes of these fatalities are premature birth controversies, infection and pneumonia. The study gives startling figures of deaths among the new born ones as 965,000 deaths during the first 28 days of life, with an additional 125,000 deaths between the ages of one month and five years,
We in India have a toll of 3.6 lakh children under the age of five from pre-term birth complications each year. This is a high rate of fatalities and needs to be controlled. Though of course in recent years, people in general and would-be mothers in particular are becoming more and more aware of caring for the new born kids, yet the number of kids that we are losing has to be reduced drastically. Since India lives in her villages, it is important that more maternity hospitals are opened in rural areas. It would be desirable that respective Health Departments also take care of educating would-be mothers on all aspects of child care up to the age of 5. As far as our State is concerned, our rural population lacks many facilities needed by child care. Our remote villages need connectivity with maternity centres in a big way to protect new born babies from such causes as are fatal at the end of the day. A comprehensive programme of educating the village folks on child delivery, and post delivery precautionary measures will go a long way in reducing infant mortality in the State.
World Health Organization (WHO), an organ of the United Nations, has also been deeply concerned with prevention of infant mortality all over the world. It also issues enormous literature for distribution among the developing countries which carries important information for the would-be mothers to note and put to practical use. It has been rendering service in this humanitarian cause in many African countries and has brought back rich experience and information on how to avoid infant mortality. We can learn much from the experience of this international organization and put its experience to use in our State.
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