What do children die from in India today?

摘要

In The Lancet, The Million Death Study Collaborators make an important contribution to a topic of great public health significance: the causes of child mortality in India and their distribution across sexes and geographical regions. As the deadline of 2015 for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) looms, the urgency for scaling up interventions becomes more pressing-especially in India, where 29.3% of global neonatal deaths and 16.1% of global child deaths occur. This new study shows the first estimates of the leading causes of child mortality from direct measurement of 23152 child deaths captured across the country. The composition of the leading causes of death was not surprising, and was consistent with previous estimates. The crucial question for policy makers, however, is: which population groups are affected the most?