Swachh Bharat Mission May Have Saved Lives of 60,000-70,000 Children Every Year, Says Study | N18V

Swachh Bharat Mission May Have Saved Lives of 60,000-70,000 Children Every Year, Says Study | N18VIndia’s Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) may have contributed to averting 60,000–70,000 infant deaths annually, as per a study published in the prestigious international science journal Nature. Five researchers have conducted the study and the article in Nature is titled ‘Toilet construction under the Swachh Bharat Mission and infant mortality in India’.SBM was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 2, 2014, as the world’s largest sanitation programme aimed at turning India open-defecation free by 2020. The government built over 100 million household toilets in these six years and over six lakh villages were declared open-defecation free.Five researchers, Suman Chakrabarti, Soyra Gune, Tim A Bruckner, Julie Strominger, and Parvati Singh, have authored the article which says a quasi-experimental study was done to investigate the association between SBM and infant mortality rate and under five mortality rates (U5MR) in India. Data from 35 Indian states and 640 districts was analysed spanning 10 years (2011–2020).