Indian women live longer than men
Reported May 30, 2009
NEW DELHI: Women in India live longer than their male counterparts. But around 55 of 1,000 girls born every year don’t live beyond their first
birthday and 77 per 1,000 births don’t live beyond the age of five.
While a girl born in India today is expected to live for 65 years, the average life expectancy
of a male child stands at 63.
Similar is the case with Pakistan and Nepal. While the life expectancy of girls in Pakistan stands at 64 and 63 for boys, in Nepal, an average girl child is expected to live till she is 63 and a male child till the age of 62.
In comparison, girls born in Japan will on an average live till they are 86 and those born in China and Sri Lanka will live till they are 75.
The tiny nation of San Marino, which is surrounded by Italy, has the world’s lowest child mortality and boasts the longest average lifespan for men anywhere, at 81 years.
This has been revealed by WHO’s World Health Statistics 2009.
Globally, WHO recorded 9 million deaths of under five-year-olds in 2007, 28% lesser than the 12.5 million who died in 1990.
India too recorded a fall in infant mortality. While 84 girls per 1,000 population died in 1990 before they reached they reached the age of one year, the number fell to 68 in the year 2000. In case of male children, 82 deaths per 1,000 births in 1990 reduced to 66 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2000.
The under five mortality rate too has decreased in India. While 109 male children per 1,000 births died before their fifth birthday, it dropped to 86 in 2000 and 67 per 1,000 births now.
“The decline in the death toll of children under five can be achieved by scaling up interventions such as insecticide-treated mosquito nets for malaria and oral rehydration therapy for diarrhoea, increased access to vaccines and improved water and sanitation,” said Dr Ties Boerma, director of WHO’s department of health statistics and informatics.
According to the report, adolescent pregnancy rates remained high across the world. There were 48 births for every 1,000 women aged 15-19 years in 2006, a small decline from 51 per 1,000 in the year 2000.
An estimated 1.2 billion people are affected by neglected tropical diseases every year. In 2007, 546 million people were treated to prevent the parasitic disease lymphatic filariasis.
Out of every 100 deaths worldwide, 51 are due to non-communicable conditions 34 due to communicable, maternal or nutritional conditions and 14 due to injuries.
“Action needs to be taken now to implement preventive interventions, including reductions in tobacco use, overweight and obesity, and high blood pressure,” the report said.
Child mortality is one of the millennium development goals adopted by UN member states, with the aim of cutting infant deaths by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015.
But that progress was still slow and sparse, especially in poor countries and in Africa.
In low income countries, $22 per capita goes to health care, compared to $4,012 in wealthy nations, according to WHO.
Pneumonia and diarrhoea kill 3.8 million infants every year, even though both conditions are treatable, WHO said.
Another development goal, maternity mortality, remains largely unchanged since 1990, with a global average death rate of 400 maternal deaths per 100,000 births a year, and more than double that rate in sub-Saharan Africa.
