ABHIMANU IAS SPEAKS

UN MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT REPORT

• The UN Secretary General’s Millennium Development Report 2012 reveals that while the world has achieved targets of poverty reduction, improved drinking water supply and decreased number of urban residents in slums, it hasn’t done well on maternal health and child nutrition goals.

 STATUS OF INDIA:

• India is set to miss the Millennium Development Goal (MDG)-5 (on halving numbers of maternal deaths between 1990 and 2015) if it doesn’t accelerate the pace of progress.
• India has Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) of 212 per one lakh live births. India’s MDG target is to get the figure down to 109.
• India now has an IMR of 47, down from 125 per 1,000 live births in 1992.

 NUTRITION STATISTICS:

• India has the largest proportion of underweight children.
• Hunger is another huge challenge though India has reduced its poverty rates from 51 to 37 per cent between 1990 and 2012. 
• It fares poorly on all three standard indices used to measure child nutrition — stunting (height for age), wasting (weight for height) and underweight (weight for age), with 59 per cent children stunted, 42 per cent underweight and 11.4 per cent wasted