National Infant Mortality Rate Reduced Further to Forty-Seven Infant Deaths per 1000 Live Births

 As per the latest Sample Registration System (SRS) bulletin, December 2011 released by the Registrar General of India (RGI), it is noted that  Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) has dropped further by  3 points from 50 to 47 infants deaths per 1000 live births during 2010.  The IMR for rural areas has dropped by 4 points from 55 to 51 infant deaths per 1000 live births while the Urban rate now stands at 31 from the previous 34/1000.  
 
 State of Goa still has the lowest IMR of 10 infant deaths followed by Kerala with 13 infant deaths per 1000 live births (as against 12/1000 in January 2011 figures) – the Urban IMR in Kerala has however reduced to 10 against 11 of previous figures.  Madhya Pradesh has the highest IMR of 62/1000 followed by UP and Odisha with 61/1000 IMR. States/UTs of Assam, Bihar, Chandigarh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Meghalaya still have IMRs more than the national average of 47. Copy of December 2011 SRS bulletin is attached.   
 
The Sample Registration System (SRS) is a large-scale demographic survey for providing reliable annual estimates of birth rate, death rate and other fertility & mortality indicators at the national and sub-national levels. The field investigation consists of continuous enumeration of births and deaths in selected sample units by resident part time enumerators, generally anganwadi workers & teachers, and an independent survey every six months by SRS supervisors. The data obtained by these two independent functionaries are matched. The unmatched and partially matched events are re-verified in the field and thereafter an unduplicated count of births and deaths is obtained. The sample unit in rural areas is a village or a segment of it, if the village population is 2000 or more. In urban areas, the sampling unit is a census enumeration block with population ranging from 750 to 1000. At present, SRS is operational in 7,597 sample units (4,433 rural and 3,164 urban) spread across all States and Union territories and covers about 1.5 million households and 7.27 million population.