Swachh Bharat Mission's toilets averted infant deaths by 60-70k a yr: Study

Constructing toilets under the Swachh Bharat Mission India's national cleanliness programme may have helped avert roughly 60,000-70,000 infant deaths every year, according to a study.

A team, including researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute, US, looked at data from nationally representative surveys covering 35 states/Union territories and over 600 districts over 20 years.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, investigated the link between an increase in access to toilet, built under the Swachh Bharat Mission, and drop in deaths among infants and children aged under five from 2000 to 2020.

The results suggested that on average, improving district-level toilet access by 10 percentage points corresponded to a lowering of death rates in infants by 0.9 points and those in under-5 by 1.1 points.

Historically, having access to a toilet and deaths among children have been inversely related in India, the authors said.

They further found that .