Health Status of Children in India

Abstract

India with a population of 1.21 billion population stand at the second position as the most populous country in the world after China. India comprises almost 13.1 per cent of child population aged 0-6 years. Children of today are tomorrow’s citizens; hence it is very necessary to provide better health care facilities to them. India accounted almost 43 per cent underweight children against 32 percent in Pakistan, 9 percent in South Africa. Nutritional level among the children is the basic element of their overall mental and physical development. Malnutrition among the children reduced significantly over the time, but still the number of malnourished children is very high in the country. Malnutrition and mortality among children are the two faces of a single coin. Mortality among infants and under-5 children is also a major concern. In India the number of under-5 mortality rate and infant mortality rates are 49 and 42, respectively. Thus there is a need, to be more focused on the child health issues. The main objective of this paper is to study the child health condition in terms of nutrition and survival rate. The study is based on the secondary data from various published reports of the government of India.