Due to the annual decline in under-5 mortality rate by almost 7% during 2008-13, the Government is hopeful of India attaining the target 5 of Millennium Development Goal-4 i.e. reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the U5MR. This has been revealed in a press release on checking child mortality rate by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, dated 28 April, 2015.   However, experts think that this will be...

-The Hindu India has met only four of ten health targets under the Millenium Development Goals (MDG), and has made next to no progress on another four, according to new data from the World Health Organisation. The deadline for achieving MDGs runs out this year.The WHO’s annual World Health Statistics for 2015 were released in Geneva on Wednesday. The report finds that globally, life expectancy at birth has increased by six years...

-The Hindu India also scores poorly in the Mother’s Index Rank standing at 140 out of 179 countries. India is one of the 10 countries in the world with the greatest survival divide between wealthy and poor urban children. It figures in this worrying list with other nations that include, Rwanda, Cambodia, Kenya, Vietnam, Peru, Madagascar, Ghana, Bangladesh and Nigeria. India has also scored poorly in the Mother’s Index Rank standing at 140...

-Maintream Weekly In order to reduce and remove the many-sided disadvantages and problems faced by Dalits and adivasis, sub-plans for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have been introduced to ensure adequate and justice-based availability of funds for these communities. Summarising the basic idea and rationale for this, the Planning Commission says: “the persistence of socio-economic backwardness of the SCs and STs in spite of the development efforts had warranted a special...

-The Hindu The Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana was introduced to provide partial wage compensation during pregnancy, but various issues plague its implementation The latest official figures indicate that India is well short of meeting the Millennium Development Goals that pledged to reduce the country's maternal mortality ratio (MMR) by three quarters and the infant mortality rate (IMR) by two-thirds. The Sample Registration System (SRS), 2013, records MMR at 167 per 1,00,000...