The rate of infant mortality in India was 44 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2011, with an under-five mortality rate of 56 deaths per 1,000 live births. As shown in Graph 1, under-five mortality in India has been declining steadily since 1990. Although this decrease is encouraging, the under-five mortality rate has not yet reached the country’s target of 42 deaths per 1,000 live births, as defined by Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG 4). In 2010 the three most prominent known causes of death for children below the age of five years were pneumonia (24 per cent), prematurity (20 per cent) and diarrhoea (13 per cent).
Other contributory causes were birth asphyxia (11 per cent), neonatal sepsis (eight per cent) and measles (three per cent). In the period 2007-11 India had a reported maternal mortality ratio of 210 deaths per 100,000 live births (this figure was estimated at 200 deaths per 100,000 by UN agencies/World Bank in 2010).
