BMJ  2003;327 (19 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7407.0

Girls are less likely to survive infancy in India

In India more female infants than male infants die from easily treatable conditions. In a retrospective analysis of verbal autopsies collected by health workers in three Delhi slums, Khanna and colleagues (p 126) found an excess number of deaths among girls due to conditions such as diarrhoea. There were no significant differences in deaths due to less preventable and less treatable conditions like birth asphyxia. Three quarters of the unexplained infant deaths, for which no history of illness and no sufficient explanation were found, were in girls. In India, where there are more men than women, the role of sex discrimination is of wide concern; both antenatal sex determination and female feticide are incriminated.

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Community based retrospective study of sex in infant mortality in India

R Khanna, A Kumar, J F Vaghela, V Sreenivas, and J M Puliyel
BMJ 2003 327: 126. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]