Under-five mortality in India was recorded below one million in 2017 for the first time in five years, according to a report by the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UNIGME).

The number came down to 9,89,000 from 1.08 million in 2016.

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Lauding the drop in under-five mortality for the first time in five years, Yasmin Ali Haque, Representative at the UNICEF India, said the efforts for improving institutional delivery, along with countrywide scale up of special newborn care units and strengthening of routine immunisation, have been instrumental in achieving this.

“India continues to show impressive gains in reduction of child deaths with under-five deaths in India falling below the one million mark for the first time as per the latest UN estimates,” she said.

“Even more heartening is the fourfold decline in the gender gap in survival of the girl child over last five years. The investment on ensuring holistic nutrition under POSHAN and national commitment to make India open defecation free by 2019, are steps that will help to accelerate progress further,” she said.

In 2017, sex-specific under-five mortality rate was 39 in 1,000 live births for male and 40 in 1,000 live births for females.

In 2016, India’s infant mortality rate was 44 per 1,000 live births.

The report released by the UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Population Division and the World Bank Group said 6,05,000 neonatal deaths were reported in India in 2017, while the number of deaths among children aged 514 was 1,52,000.

Dr Gagan Gupta, Chief of Health at the World Health Organization, said India is making good progress in combatting reasons leading to infant deaths through a number of government-led initiatives.

“About 18 per cent of children born globally are from India,” he added.

The main reasons behind infant deaths remain to be lack of access to water, sanitation, proper nutrition or basic health services, Gupta said.

“This is also the first time that the number of deaths under five is equal to number of births. The next step would be reducing the number of deaths,” he said.