The number of deaths of children under-five children in Mumbai exceeds 32,000
19 Aug, 2013An application was filed with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) under the Right to Information (RTI) Act seeking to get the details about the number of deaths of the children below five years of age in Mumbai in past five years.
As initially the information was not provided to the applicant, he filed an appeal with the first appellate authority on whose instructions the information was made available to the appellant. As per the data provided in the reply, 32,664 children below five years have died in and around Mumbai during the period from 2008 to 2012. The figures in the reply show that maximum deaths occurred in 2009 when 7,115 children died in the city. It was followed by 6,986 deaths in 2008 and 5,869 deaths in 2012.
The data also shows that most of these deaths were of infants i.e. children below one year. In 2008, out of total deaths 5,754 children were less than one year old. Similarly, in 2012, number of children who died below one year of age was 5,045. Overall, infants consistently constituted over 80% of total deaths of children below 5 years. Regarding the reasons for the death of such a high number children, both BMC and the health department couldn’t provide the causes of deaths.