Our Spl Correspondent
New Delhi: Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) in the country as a whole has come down from 50 to 47 per thousand but in case of Meghalaya, Assam and three other states the same remains well above the national average.
As per the latest Sample Registration System (SRS) bulletin released on Wednesday by the Registrar General of India (RGI), it is noted that the IMR has dropped by 3 points from 50 to 47 infant deaths per 1000 live births during 2010. But in case of Meghalaya the same remains at 55 well over the national average of 47, the report said.
More alarmingly, the mortality rate is much higher in rural areas of the Hill State than the urban areas, the report said.
While in urban areas it remains at 37, in rural areas it is 58, the report stated.
Besides Meghalaya and Assam three other states — Bihar, Haryana, Rajasthan and the Union Territory of Chandigarh — have IMRs above the national average.
Goa has the lowest IMR of 10 infant deaths followed by Kerala with 13 infant deaths per 1000 live births.
The Sample Registration System (SRS) is a large-scale demographic survey for providing reliable annual estimates of birth rate, death rate and other fertility & mortality indicators at the national and sub-national levels.
The field investigation consists of continuous enumeration of births and deaths in selected sample units by resident part time enumerators, generally anganwadi workers & teachers, and an independent survey every six months by SRS supervisors. The data obtained by these two independent functionaries are matched.
The unmatched and partially matched events are re-verified in the field and thereafter an unduplicated count of births and deaths is obtained.