India lagging on goals to reduce infant, maternal mortality rates

New Delhi: India is lagging behind in meeting the UN’s millenium development goals (MDG) for bringing down infant and maternal mortality rates, but is on course to achieve all other targets, the government said on Monday.

Minister for women and child development Renuka Chowdhury also informed the Rajya Sabha that the government is planning to merge two schemes for adolescent girls to universalize the programme.

In a reply to supplementaries, she said the country was “well on track” to meet the millenium development goals, but was lagging behind on the target set on bringing down infant and maternal mortality rates.

According to a Unicef report, the mortality rate of children under five years was 76 per 1,000 births in 2006. MDG’s target is to bring that down to 38 per 1,000 births by 2015. The average annual rate of reduction has to be 7.6 % till 2015 to meet the target.