Blog examines child survival efforts in India

"Last week, the Government of India held a star-studded National Summit on child survival, 'co-convened' with USAID and UNICEF," Victoria Fan, a research fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), and Rachel Silverman, a research assistant for the global health team at the CGD, write in the center's "Global Health Policy" blog. "Underlying this national attention was an ambition to tout India's progress in child survival, particularly that the country's child mortality rate has 'declined much faster than the global average,'" but "one cannot help but be concerned how child survival in a country as large as India will ultimately accelerate," they continue. "Business as usual will not be enough to accelerate the rate of progress in child survival seen in India today, and we should not be content to let it remain merely 'better than average.' India needs new approaches and innovations to push forward and improve," they state (2/14).