In China's battle against newborn deaths, lessons for India

• China has reduced deaths among newborn babies by almost two-thirds in little over a decade — an unprecedented success rate that a new study says holds lessons for countries like India still struggling with high neonatal and maternal mortality rates.
• Deaths among newborn babies fell from 24.7 per 1,000 in 1996 to 9.3 in 2008 — a 62-per-cent decrease — according to a paper published in The Lancet medical journal on Friday.
• At the heart of China's success, the paper found, was a vast improvement in access to obstetric care in rural areas, and a nationwide programme that specifically targeted increasing the number of hospital births.
• The study found that less than half of all women in China gave birth in hospitals in 1988. By 2008, however, hospital births had almost become universal.
• Other countries, the study said, could learn from China's focus on improving access to health care in rural areas, with the findings proving "a great impetus for countries to increase demand for and quality of facility-based intrapartum care."
• Five countries account for more than half the world's newborn deaths — India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

• India accounts for the highest number of newborn deaths in the world — over nine lakh in 2009 — despite a 33-per-cent drop from 1990, according to a recent study released by the World Health Organisation. Newborns account for 41 per cent of all child deaths.
• According to UNICEF, India's Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR) in 2009 was 34 per 1,000 live births — more than three times higher than China's NMR, which UNICEF estimated at 11 in 2009. India's NMR in 1990 was 49.
• India's Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR), which is closely tied to NMR figures, is also far higher than China's. In 2008, India's MMR, or the deaths of women from pregnancy-related causes, was 230 per 100,000 live births. China's, that same year, was 38.
• China's controversial one-child policy, which reduced the risk of child and maternal deaths by limiting the number of children for each family, has also been cited as bringing down infant mortality rates.