Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) is lopsided towards EAG and Assam State as their combined IMR is 50 for the year 2012



The Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) of a population is the number of children dying before celebrating their first birth day out of one thousand number of children born. 
As per ORGI’s Sample Registration System’s Statistical Reports, the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) across the country had been declining.
While 15 states or Union Territories out of 35 states have achieved the expected/targeted level of IMR of 30.  The states having IMR falling in the range (30, 42] are twelve states namely, Andhra Pradesh, Empowered Action Group (EAG) States (Jharkhand, Uttarakhand), Gujarat, Haryana, , Karnataka, West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Mizoram, and Dadar & Nagar Haveli and the remaining eight states/UTs have IMR above 42 and these are: Assam, six EAG States (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh) and Meghalaya.  
The highest IMR for any state/UT is for Madhya Pradesh (56) and second highest is for Assam (55), followed by Odisha (53) and Uttar Pradesh (53).  None other state/UT is above 50 mark.
The following table may be seen which gives out the IMR for EAG states, IMR of the EAG and Assam state (for these nine states Annual health survey has been carried during 2010-13) and for the remaining states and Union Territories for the year 2012.

States/Uts
Population
Live Births
Infant Deaths
IMR
EAG States
566363504
14528238
720332
49.6
Assam
31698624
702125
38617
55.0
EAG & Assam States
598062128
15230364
758949
49.8
Rest of States/Uts
632360786
11346771
357290
31.5
All India
1230422914
26577135
1116240
42.0


One may note that the IMR for the first two categories of the Indian States, the IMR works out to be around 50, whereas for the remaining States/UTs it comes out as 31.5 for the year 2012.  Thus, it definitely demonstrates the lopsidedness towards the EAG and Assam States.  Government is right in its action of having focus on these states in order to solve the problem under question.

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