HELP THEM....TO SURVIVE

Two million slum children die every year 

Our countries growing status as an economic superpower is masking a failure to stem a shocking rate of infant deaths among its poorest people.

Nearly two million children under five die every year in India – one every 15 seconds – the highest number anywhere in the world. More than half die in the month after birth and 400,000 in their first 24 hours.

A devastating report by Save the Children,  reveals that the poor are disproportionately affected and the charity accuses the country of failing to provide adequate healthcare for the impoverished majority of its one billion people. While the World Bank predicts that India's economy will be the fastest-growing by next year and the country is an influential force within the G20, World Health Organisation figures show it ranks 171st out of 175 countries for public health spending.

Malnutrition, neonatal diseases, diarrhoea and pneumonia are the major causes of death. Poor rural states are particularly affected by a dearth of health resources. But even in the capital, Delhi, where an estimated 20% of people live in slums, the infant mortality rate is reported to have doubled in a year, though city authorities dispute this.

Save the Children says millions of mothers and their babies are simply not getting the skilled medical care they need, and the poor, in particular, have been left behind.

India's state healthcare system is supposed to be open to all, offering access to government-run hospitals. The reality is that, while government hospitals often offer high standards of care, they can be overcrowded, and if they are short of the required medicines patients are asked to pay for them themselves. In the meantime, private health care has surged and now accounts for the majority of India's medical provision, giving access to world-class facilities for those who can pay or who can afford private insurance premiums.

According to the UK India Business Council, about 50 million middle-class Indians can afford private healthcare – a growing number but still a tiny fraction of the overall population – while the country still lags behind other developed countries, with only 0.7 hospital beds per 1,000 people compared with a global average of 4.

Many slum-dwellers are too far from hospitals to make use of their facilities, because they cannot afford to use private auto-rickshaws to reach them and there is no public transport. Instead they turn to quack doctors – a slightly cheaper option, but because they are unregulated and notoriously unreliable, one fraught with dangers.

According to the report, the national mortality rate for under-fives in the poorest fifth of the population is 92 in 1,000 compared with 33 for the highest fifth. The national average is 72.

The Save the Children report says nearly nine million children die worldwide every year before the age of five. India has the highest number of deaths, with China fifth. Afghanistan has the dubious distinction of featuring in the top 10 of total child deaths and of child deaths per head of population.

The charity accuses the world's leaders of a scandalous failure to meet the Millennium Development Goals, agreed in 2000, to cut child mortality by two- thirds between 1990 and 2015 and calls for a sharp increase in health spending