Aizawl: Mizoram registered the lowest Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) in the country for the second time in a row, according to the Sample Registration System (SRS) bulletin 2020 published by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India recently.
Registering only 3 infant deaths per thousand live births, the Northeastern state has the lowest IMR in the country in 2020, followed by Nagaland, whose IMR is 4 and Sikkim and Goa, which registered IMR of 5 each, the bulletin said.
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The national average of IMR for the year 2020 was 28, it said. Madhya Pradesh has the highest IMR at 43.
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Among the northeastern states, Assam has the highest Infant Mortality Rate at 36, followed by Meghalaya at 29 and Arunachal Pradesh at 21, according to the bulletin.
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With the new distinction, Mizoram has reported the lowest IMR in the country for two consecutive years since 2019, officials said.
The IMR of Mizoram in 2016 was 27, which was reduced to 15 in 2017 and further reduced to 5 in 2018 and 3 in 2019, they said.
In 2018, the northeastern had been awarded for being among the best performing states in reducing IMR.
The state health department has attributed the new achievement to the hard work and dedication of healthcare workers and staff of the department and other departments, including education, public health engineering, social welfare and rural development, among others.
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The Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), which is widely accepted as a crude indicator of the overall health scenario of a country or a region, is defined as the infant deaths (less than one year) per thousand live births in a given time period and for a given region.