Anuradha Gupta, Additional Secretary and Mission Director, NRHM, said that the Health Ministry will launch an enabling Strategic Roadmap for Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCH + A) and other development initiatives.
It will engage with all partners to arrive at actionable goals and commitments for high-burden states aimed to reduce the deaths of children from preventable causes.
"For the first time India is looking at adolescents..... Unless we address the adolescent health, until much sharper focus on adolescent health, I think we are going to grapple with these issues," she said while announcing the upcoming National Summit on "Call to Action for Child Survival and Development" scheduled to be held in Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu from February 7 to 9.
Though the child mortality rate in the country has dropped by almost 50 per cent since 1990, it is still among the top four nations that account for 50 per cent of global under- five mortality.
With a large birth cohort of about 26 million and 158 million children in the age-group of 0-5 years, India accounts for the largest number of Under Five deaths-- nearly 1.5 million, of which close to 0.8 million die within 28 days of birth.
She said that deaths of children including neonathal mortality is very high in the country. "The big step forward of the summit is sharing of strategic approach," she said.
The strategy is to develop peer educators who can give out "very critical information" to adolescent girls through councilling so that when they get married, they will have "very good understanding of basic things" like birth control, the official said. (MORE)