Apart from the rising number of female foeticide cases in India, more than 200,000 girls under the age of five die each year in the country, finds a Lancet study led by an Indian-origin resear-cher. The study, published in the journal Lancet Global Health, has found that there is on an average 239,000 excess deaths each year of girls under the age of five owing to neglect due to gender discrimination.
The numbers which are particularly higher in the northern States of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, are mostly due to unwanted child bearing and subsequent neglect.
For too long, the focus has been only on prenatal sex selection, said co-researcher Christophe Guilmoto from the Universite Paris Descartes in France.
“Gender-based discrimi-nation towards girls doesn’t simply prevent them from being born, it may also preci-pitate the death of those who are born,” he said.
The figures which are around 2.4 million in a decade can only be checked with stress on female literacy and employment in modern industries, the researchers noted.
“Regional estimates of excess deaths of girls shows any intervention in the food and health care allocation should particularly target Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where poverty, low social development, and patriarchal institutions persist and investments on girls are limited,” said Nandita Saikia post-doctoral research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria.
