Even as India's efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nationals in child and maternal mortality are missing the targets, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has drawn up a scheme to augment the drives through its newly launched CSIR 800 scheme.
The CSIR, which launched the scheme towards the last year, is aiming to improve the quality of lives of one million rural people geographically spread across the country, in accordance with stated targets and relevant UN-Millennium Development Goals. Against a projected cost of Rs.120 crore, the CSIR has been allocated Rs.50 crore, sources said.
The scheme will be implemented through 24 CSIR Technology-enabled Villages (TECHVIL) chosen because of their high proportion of families living below the poverty line. It will enrol one million people in the adjoining communities to improve the health standards.
Meanwhile, reports suggested that India was growing slow and may miss the MDGs like reduction in maternal and child deaths and increase in child immunization by 2015, when the goals would expire.
One of the MDG goals is to reduce under-five mortality rate to 42 per 1,000 live births by 2015. India will reach 52 by that year missing the target by 10 percentage points. The national level estimate of infant mortality rate is likely to be 44 against the MDG target of 27 in 2015. Some of the largest states like Madhya Pradesh (62), Odisha (61), Uttar Pradesh (61), Assam (58), Meghalaya (55), Rajasthan (55), Chhattisgarh (51), Bihar (48) and Haryana (48) still have IMR above the national estimates. India will reach maternal mortality rate (MMR) of 139 per 100,000 live births by 2015, falling short by 30 percentage points, according to the latest estimates.