Are we willing to pay the price of child mortality?
Shabbir Ahmed died in early November in a government hospital in Mumbai. You wouldn’t have heard of him. He wasn’t someone well known. Born into a poor family, he was nine months old when pneumonia claimed him. Two million children like Shabbir die in India before they reach the age of five years. Child mortality rates in India, 72 per thousand live births, are higher than those in Bangladesh (61) and war-torn Sri Lanka (21). And for good measure, India also accounts for one-fifth of newborn deaths globally.
(This story appears in the 04 December, 2009 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)