India highest neonatal death rate - traditional practices blamed

MP tops the list of neonatal deaths

Vidya Krishnan / Bhopal
http://www.dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?m...t&counter_img=2

Before pitying impoverished and mal-nourished children in God-forsaken places, like, Rwanda, Zambia or Vietnam, a look at the World Health Organisation (WHO) report states that Madhya Pradesh presents a worst case of neonatal deaths than these African countries.




As per the latest WHO report: 15 per 1000 newborns die in Vietnam, 40 per 1000 live births in Zambia die before 28 days of birth and 33 per 1000 neonatal deaths in Zaire as against Madhya Pradesh's 60 per 1000 infant mortality rate! India, thus contributes nearly 30 (1.2 million) per cent of the 3.9 million neonatal death worldwide.



The report on 'State of India's Newborns' reveals alarming figures of infant mortality rate.



According to the report, the infant mortality rate in Madhya Pradesh is one of highest globally.



Of the total neonatal deaths worldwide, MP accounts for 13 percent of deaths. Madhya Pradesh put with Uttar Pradesh and Bihar contribute to 50 percent of newborn deaths in the country which comes to 15 percent of the entire global neonatal deaths, i.e., 60 out of 1000 infants die within the first month!



The report attributes the increasing number of newborn deaths to lack of proper child care among various communities.



The report says, "customs like conducting the delivery at home by elderly relatives, using dirty rugs and clothes as pads (during delivery), performing frequent vaginal examinations and applying substances like Ghee to genitalia and applying chilies, juice of neem leaves and cow dung to the breast to enhance lactation lead to infections and deaths amongst infants."



Reacting to WHO report, Dr Gauri Shankar Shejwar, Minister for Health and Family Welfare, assured that the State Government is taking appropriate measures. "We are promoting institutional deliveries. The State Government has initiated schemes, like, providing transport and free delivery to pregnant women in remote areas of the state.''



He says that several schemes under the Rural Health Mission are being promoted by the state. Though he admitted that fighting traditional ills will take time, he claimed: ``We will soon be appointing lady officers in rural areas who will assist pregnant women and ensure safe delivery of the child with post-pregnancy child care for the infant."

This just can't be right. I've frequently read that cow dung has "all antiseptic properties".

Seriously, though, while the death of any infant is a sad thing, the varying ways that infant mortality is measured from country to country make any such statistics good for seasoning but not informing -- in other words, they should be taken with a grain of salt.

Dandavats,
Lancer

At 61 per 1000, Orissa is actually higher than MP on a per capita basis. UP is highest in number. Guess the headline writer didn't read the report.



The report is available here. (pdf, 188 pages)

There's a curious statement on page 16:



Not sure what to make of the first part of that statement. Perhaps it's a reference to the custom of not naming a child till several weeks or months have passed.

That's the kind of thing that I was referring to when I said that infant and birth mortality statistics must be taken with a grain of salt. Anti-Americans (not to get political about this ) love to point to the U.S.'s seemingly high infant mortality rate as evidence that everything isn't hunky-dorey in the land where there is no universal health coverage, but the U.S. counts as "live births" a lot more events than other countries include, so the statistics are skewed. Disraeli has more details, but I don't want to risk misquoting him, so you'll have to look it up yourself.

And since we're Gaudiyas, we might as well turn prajalpa into krsna-katha! Does Kamsa's brief interview with Durga count as a live birth and an instance of infant mortality?

Dandavats,
Lancer

I think that would depend on the health of the animal and in India there are some pretty sick cows, not every single cow would produce cow dung with 'all antiseptic qualities' and it's a myth to think they would just because they are 'cows'.
That combined with other unclean habits such as dirty rags would most certainly spread infection. Dont kid yourself many many Indian families live in extremely unclean, unhealthy conditions.

namaskar,

jijaji

In the 'advanced' West, authorities are struggling to understand recent big rises in deaths from asthma and strange new allergies, like death from eating nuts etc.

Amazingly, some such modern problems have been successfully treated with -

Dirt and Infection!

In other words we have become too clean!

I saw a TV program on this recently, where in just one case I remember a man was successfully treated for some sort of Krohn's disease (a horrible thing) by the introduction of worm parasites into his system! Remember for most of human history, the presence of worms in the gut was normal.

Same for dirt. Too much antiseptic and of course antibiotic leads to the body attacking itself, (allergy) because of underused immune system.

I have lots of immune system probs, and I feel much healthier in India.

That's not to say I don't fully sympathise with Indian mothers and children - I was pleased to see on my last visit after a 20 year hiatus that cheap good quality drugs are now available, compared to the Soviet rubbish they had to take in the 1980's.

Here read this:
http://whyfiles.org/144larrydodder/2.html

And this:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/4/l_104_07.html

***
What does all this mean in the end? I for one don't know.

Besides, nowadays people seem to be using buffalo stool in the same capacity...

buffalo ghee, buffalo milk, buffalo stool...where will it end..?