Devang Chaturvedi
New Delhi
Feb 25th, 2013
Indicators for Under Five Mortality Rate (U5MR) have been found on the rise in the 9 SAARC countries as per the latest data released by United Nations Procurement Division. The under-5 mortality rate is the number of children (male or female) who die by the age of five, per thousand live births per year.
While Sri Lanka leads the SAARC nations with the least indicators in South Asia, Maldives, Bhutan, Bangladesh and India have shown considerable resolve in rooting out the major causes responsible. The data however is available from 1985-2005.
However Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar and Nepal have not shown the expected response with Afghanistan standing on a lowly eleventh in a list populated majorly by poverty stricken African nations.
http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=SOWC&f=inID%3A17
(Provides Nation Rankings on U5MR data)
The data could be found on the following link at : http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=GenderStat&f=inID%3a42
It is good to see that the over all trend is to improved outcomes.