However, the health minister said that his department was working on combatting child and maternal mortality.
Underlining the grim social disparities in Maharashtra, the government has admitted that tribal areas in the state have recorded the death of almost 8,000 children and over 450 mothers in around two years.
In a written reply to a question by Sandeep Naik (NCP- Airoli) and others in the winter session of the state legislative assembly on Friday, health minister Dr Deepak Sawant said that 16 tribal districts in the state had recorded the death of 6,589 children below the age of six years and 306 mothers in the 2015-16 financial year. In the present 2016-17 fiscal, a total of 1,454 children have died and 153 cases of maternal mortality have been recorded till October 2016.
Sawant however claimed that the health department was working effectively to combat child and maternal mortality. In his reply, the health minister said that while 283 children had died at Melghat in Amravati in 2015-16, these were not due to malnutrition but because of pneumonia, low birth weight, early births, asphyxia and infections. Shahapur and Dolkhamb in Thane district also recorded the death of 29 mothers and four children between January and June 2016.
Meanwhile, in another written reply to a question by Amit Vilasrao Deshmukh (Congress- Latur city) and others, women and child development minister Pankaja Munde claimed that a decline in malnutrition had been observed this year compared to the previous year. However, there has been a marginal rise in the figures for Palghar, Nandurbar, Jalgaon, Raigad, Gadchiroli, Nagpur, Amravati, Nanded and Mumbai city in September 2016 when compared to last year. This was because of diseases like diarrhoea, cholera and pneumonia that happened during the rainy season.
A total of 147 children between the age of zero and six died between April and August 2016 at Mokhada, Jawhar, Vikramgad and Wada in Palghar district, but Munde claimed that this was because of various ailments and diseases and not because of malnutrition.
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