BS RAWAT
NEW DELHI : Even as India has a target to bring down child mortality, there were as many as 5051 stillbirths as against 267828 live births in national capital Delhi’s public and private hospitals in the year 2017-18.

RTI activist Rajhans Bansal, in his query to the Delhi Health Department, had asked about the number of stillbirths and live births in the State government and private hospitals year-wise since 2013. The RTI response has revealed that in the past five years, as many as 21281 stillbirths and 1966960 live births took place in public and private hospitals of Delhi. This indicates a very high proportion of stillbirths in the hospitals in the national capital.

In 2013, a total 3517 stillbirths and 370000 live births took place in Delhi’s hospitals. It was 3102 stillbirths and 373693 in 2014. The stillbirths rose to 3175 in 2015 against 374012 live births. Stillbirths decreased to 2977 in 2016.

As per HMIS data, stillbirths rose shockingly to 5051 in 2017-18. In 2018-19 stillbirths were 3459 upto December 2018.

Doctors in the Lok Nayak Hospital, Delhi, mainly blame lack of pre-natal treatment for this high incidence of stillbirths. They said the deaths could be caused due to multiple reasons, including the nutritional levels of the pregnant woman and pregnancy related complications.