UN warning on India child health

The world will fail to reach millennium development goals unless India improves its record on health and child protection, a UN report says.

Unicef, the UN children's agency, says India is failing to provide basic healthcare for its poorest children - despite robust economic growth.

India and China account for nearly a third of the world's child deaths, the vast majority of them in India.

The country had 2.1m child deaths in 2006 - more than any other state.

The corresponding figure for China was more than 400,000.

Growing divide

The Unicef report examined the latest trends in child and maternal health in Asia.

It said the region's robust economic growth had lifted millions out of poverty, but deepening disparities between the rich and the poor had meant that health care often failed to reach those at the very bottom.

"It is a "fundamental truth" that unless India achieves major improvements in health, nutrition, water and sanitation, education, gender equality and child protection, global efforts to reach the millennium development goals (MDGs) will fail," Unicef says in the State of Asia-Pacific's Children 2008 report.

The divide between rich and poor is rising at a troubling rate in the region, the report says.

"This is leaving vast numbers of mothers and children at risk of increasing relative poverty."