NEW DELHI — Her first child survived eight months before succumbing to pneumonia; her second was stillborn; her third, delivered in a rickshaw, gasped for an hour before dying.
When she got pregnant for a fourth time, Juhi, a woman from a South Delhi slum who uses only one name, was spotted by a local health worker and taken to a mobile clinic. A doctor diagnosed severe anemia, gave her iron pills and begged her to eat more.
Juhi listened, and gave birth to a boy, Muhammad Sultan, who has survived his first birthday — a huge milestone in a country with about one-sixth of the world’s population but one-third of all newborn deaths.
“My in-laws were telling me they would get my husband married to someone else, because I couldn’t have a healthy baby,” Juhi, 26, said in an interview. “That’s why we left our village. But now my mother-in-law is happy with me.”
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Juhi said she was trying to eat better.
“I would like to have one more child,” she said, with a mixture of sadness and hope.
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