70,000 babies expected to be born on January 1 in India, UP to welcome 16K

india

Updated: Jan 01, 2019 15:05 IST

Indian babies will account for 18% of the expected 3,95,072 births across the world on the New Year’s Day, UNICEF said on Monday.

An estimated 69,944 babies will be born in India, and of these Uttar Pradesh will welcome around 16,000.

“Yes, the craze for new arrivals on January 1 still lingers. Would-be mothers still insist on having their delivery on the first day of the year. However, the most maddening of all January 1sts in this respect was the first day of the new millennium,” said Dr Jyotsna Mehta, a gynaecologist.

However, she cautioned, in several countries including India, many babies would not make it past their first day.

In 2017, about 1 million babies died the day they were born and 2.5 million in just their first month of life.

Seven thousand newborns died every day in 2017 - 47% of all child deaths were under the age of five. 47% of all under-5 child deaths in that year were among newborn infants, up from 40% in 1990. Seventy-five per cent of neonatal deaths occur in the first week.

In Uttar Pradesh, about 1,65,000 children died in their first month of life.

Among these, most died from preventable causes such as premature birth, complications during delivery and infections like sepsis and pneumonia, said Yasmin Ali Haque, UNICEF India representative.

“This New Year Day, let us all make a resolution to fulfil every right of each girl and boy, starting with the right to survive,” said Yasmin.

“We can save millions of babies if we invest in training and equipping local health workers so that every child is born to a safe pair of hands,” said Ruth Leano, UNICEF chief of field office, UP.

Year 2019 also marks the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the ‘Convention on the Rights of the Child’, which the UNICEF would be commemorating with events across the globe throughout the year. Under the convention, governments have committed to, among other things, taking measures to save every child by providing quality health care.

According to available data, immense progress has been made in ensuring child survival across the world over the past three decades, cutting the number of children dying before reaching their fifth birthday by more than half.

But the progress has been slower for newborns. Babies dying in the first month account for 47% of all deaths among children under five. In UP, deaths in the first month of life are considerably higher at 64%.

A UNICEF official said that the organisation’s ‘Every Child Alive’ campaign called for immediate investment to deliver affordable, quality health care solutions to every mother and newborn.

“These include a steady supply of clean water and electricity at health facilities, the presence of a skilled health attendant during birth, ample supplies and medicines to prevent and treat complications during pregnancy, delivery and birth, and empowered adolescent girls and women who can demand better quality of health services,” said the official.