The latest edition of Unicef’s State of the World’s Children report suggests that 1.2 million children under the age of five died of totally preventable diseases in 2015. For India, the report has been mixed: India’s key health indicator — Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) was 38 in 2014, lagging behind Bangladesh (IMR of 31) and Nepal (IMR of 29). Yet this dubious record is hardly debated by society, media, political and administrative system, industry and religious leaders.

Underscoring the importance of social and political will to change such a situation, Mahmood Fatala, former director of the World Health Organization’s maternal health programme, said in 1990s: “Mothers are not dying because we do not know how to save them, but because the society has not decided that their lives are worth saving”.

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