Reuters reported that seven thousand girls are born in India than the global average suggests, the United Nations Children’s Fund said on Tuesday. Despite laws banning sex determination tests, in much of India female feticide is common, where families view boys in spite of girls as an asset.

UNICEF also stated that the problem of female feticide is rising more significantly in India since 1991, at the India launch of its “State of the World’s Children 2007″ report.

The global sex ratio, which is 954 girls to 1,000 boys, suggests that 38,000 girls should be born in India.

But in comparison to this, out of 71,000 children born in India everyday, only 31,000 girls are being born, which gives a sex ratio of 882 girls per 1,000 boys.

67.7 per cent of females are literate between the age group of 15 to 24 as compared to 82 per cent of males in India, and on the whole against 98.5 per cent of women of the same age group in China. Above all, around 45 per cent of females are being forced for marriage before the age of 18, which is violation against the law. In turn this contributes to high rates of male mortality, with one woman dying because of pregnancy in every seven minutes in India.

UNICEF said, that after birth, discrimination continues against the girls in India leading to maternal care, limiting their access to nutrition, education and healthcare.

Girls under the age of 15 are more likely to die during the pregnancy period and childbirth than women in their twenties. ‘Premature pregnancy and motherhood which leads to an inevitable consequence of child marriage’, UNICEF said.

Modern diagnostic techniques like ultrasound and amniocentesis which checks the health of the fetus, has made it possible to ascertain the sex in the earlier stages of gestation, the report stated.

These sophisticated techniques can be misused in countries, where there is a strong preference to sons than girls, leading to fetus feticide.

Some major steps and necessary actions should be taken into consideration in order to prevent the fetus feticide, otherwise a time will come when their will be very less birth of girls, which will be absolutely against the law and the global sex ratio stated.

Via: Sciam