Our Health: How Does It Count? - An Overview

Abstract

For the year 1993 (latest available) Registrar General of India reports a death rate of 9 per 1000 population. World Bank (1993, p.290) reports the same figure as a death rate for the countries that the Bank classifies as high income economies (HIEs). These figures show that the death rates for the countries belonging to
HIEs and for India are the same. However it is important to realize that the health conditions in the two are not the same. To understand the relationship between health and death rates one needs to see, not just the number that dies, but 'who' dies. Among these are the age and sex differentials in the deaths. For example, the infant mortality rates (IMR) or the deaths in the first year of life, for India was 90 for 1000 births. Whereas that for HIEs it was 8. (World Bank, 1993, p.292-293) Same is true for death rates for other ages, for the two sexes and for
that matter, deaths such as maternal deaths, calculated as the maternal mortality rate (MMR).