Reduce infant and maternal mortality rate in Uttar Pradesh: Yogi Adityanath tells officials

 Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has asked the state officials to prepare an action plan to reduce the infant, child and maternal mortality rate in the state. He also stressed on taking steps to check female foeticide.

In a meeting with the officials of the family welfare department last night, Adityanath also stressed on the need to ensure that children get better nutrition.

The chief minister also made it clear to the officers that laxity in the implementation of schemes meant for the welfare of women and children will not be tolerated, an official spokesman said.

Besides emphasising on the immunisation programme for children, the Chief Minister asked for taking firm action under the rules to check female foeticide for maintaining gender ratio in society.

As per statistics provided by the Centre, Uttar Pradesh has an infant mortality rate of 78 i.e. 78 out of 1,000 children in the state die before they reach the age of five. The data suggests that this is the worse in the country amongst all the states.

During the 2008/2009 period, the government clubbed data from both Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand to calculate maternal mortality rate and revealed that the states had a maternal mortality rate of 292 in 1,00,000 births.