Current Affairs: 8th feb 2015

Despite high maternal mortality, India records drop in fertility

India  is unlikely to achieve the fifth Millennium Development Goals (MDG-5) of reducing maternal mortality to 109 per 1,00,000 live births by 2015, is however, confident of meeting the target for lowering the total fertility rate (TFR) by the end of the 12th Plan.
India hopes to bring down the TFR to 2.1 by the end of 2017 with nine of the 11 high-focus States registering a decline of 0.05 per cent.

Ready Stats

1. As per the data , 24 States and Union Territories have already achieved the replacement fertility level of 2.1 or less.
2. Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Sikkim, Mizoram and Punjab already have a TFR of less than 2.0; only Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have a higher TFR of 3.1 and 3.3 respectively.
3. “It will take about four years for the TFR to go down to 2.1, which is already around 2.3, there is a momentum towards reduction and we are hopeful of meeting the targets. There has been a 0.2 per cent reduction in TFR in the high-focus State of Uttar Pradesh alone, which is very encouraging,”
4. The Ministry is also focussing on meeting the unmet contraception needs; unmet contraception in India is about 21.3 per cent as per the District Level Household and Facility Survey- 3(DLHS 3).
5. There are States like Bihar that have an unmet contraception need of 33.5 per cent, Meghalaya has 32.7 per cent and Nagaland 33.8 per cent.

Key terms

• Maternal Mortality - is the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management but not from accidental or incidental causes as per WHO.
•  Maternal mortality ratio (MMR): the ratio of the number of maternal deaths during a given time period per 100,000 live births during the same time-period
• Maternal mortality rate (MMRate): the number of maternal deaths in a population divided by the number of women of reproductive age, usually expressed per 1,000 women.
• Age-Sex Structure : The composition of a population as determined by the number or proportion of males and females in each age category. The age-sex structure of a population is the cumulative result of past trends in fertility, mortality, and migration. Information on age-sex composition is essential for the description and analysis of many other types of demographic data. See also population pyramid.
• Birth Control Practices employed by couples that permit sexual intercourse with reduced likelihood of conception and birth. The term birth control is often used synonymously with such terms as contraception, fertility control, and family planning. But birth control includes abortion to prevent a birth, whereas family planning methods explicitly do not include abortion.
• Birth Rate (or crude birth rate): The number of live births per 1,000 population in a given year. Not to be confused with the growth rate.
• Census : A canvass of a given area, resulting in an enumeration of the entire population and often the compilation of other demographic, social, and economic information pertaining to that population at a specific time. See also survey
  Contraceptive Prevalence Percentage of couples currently using a contraceptive method.
• Crude Rate Rate of any demographic event computed for an entire population.
  Death Rate (or crude death rate) The number of deaths per 1,000 population in a given year
• Demography:  The scientific study of human populations, including their sizes, compositions, distributions, densities, growth, and other characteristics, as well as the causes and consequences of changes in these factors.
• Family Planning: The conscious effort of couples to regulate the number and spacing of births through artificial and natural methods of contraception. Family planning connotes conception control to avoid pregnancy and abortion, but it also includes efforts of couples to induce pregnancy
• Fertility :The actual reproductive performance of an individual, a couple, a group, or a population. See general fertility rate
• Fertility rates measure the actual production of offspring by females in a population.
• Replacement rates are estimates of the extent to’ which a given population is producing enough offspring to replace itself.
• birth rate- number of live births in a year for every 1000 people in the total population.
• death rate- number of people in very 1000 who die in a year.

Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals that were established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000, following the adoption of the United Nations Millennium Declaration

United Nations member states at the time (there are 193 currently), and at least 23 international organizations, committed to help achieve the following Millennium Development Goals by 2015:

1. To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. To achieve universal primary education
3. To promote gender equality and empower women
4. To reduce child mortality
5. To improve maternal health
6. To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7. To ensure environmental sustainability
8. To develop a global partnership for development

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