Telangana child mortality falls; anaemia rises

HYDERABAD:  In a positive development, the neonatal, infant and under-5 mortality rates have declined in Telangana, according to the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS) data for the year 2019-20, released on Saturday by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. This is an improvement as against the NFHS Survey 4 data of 2015-16.

The Neonatal Mortality Rate (NNMR) fell from 20% in 2015-16 to 16.8% in 2019-20. Infant Mortality Rate fell from 27.7% in 2015-16 to 26.4% in 2019-20. Similarly, the under-5 mortality is now 29.4% of the total under-5 population which has improved from 31.7% in the previous survey. While these figures mark the success of the State in curbing deaths of newborns, the indices where Telangana performed poorly was in eradicating child malnourishment and anaemia in children and adults. 

Rise in malnourished kids

The children under the age of five who are severely “wasted” have doubled in Telangana as per the latest NFHS-5 data. Severely wasted children are nearly 8.5%, which has nearly doubled from 2015-16 data of NFHS survey when only 4.8% of the children fell in this category. 

Wasting is an indicator of malnourishment and implies that for the height of the child under the age of 5, the weight is low. Similarly, in NFHS-4 data, stunting was observed in 28% of children. In 2019-20 (NFHS-5), the number of children affected by this type of under-nourishment has increased to 33.1%.

Anaemia percentage high

In terms of anaemia as well, children seem to have deteriorated over the course of the two surveys. Anaemia among children between age of 6-to-59 months has increased from 60.7% to 80%. Anaemia among adolescent women increased from 59.7% to 64.7%.

Institutional deliveries

When it comes to institutional deliveries, those in government hospitals have increased by nearly 20% between the gap of the two surveys, however, at the same time, the caesarean deliveries in these government hospitals also increased to 44.5% from 40.3%.