QURGHON TEPPA, Asia-Plus  - Over the first three months of this year, 384 children under the age of five, with 80 percent of them being babies under the age of one (308), have died in the Khatlon province, Sherali Buzmakov, the head of the Khatlon health directorate, announced at après conference in Qurghon Teppa on April 15. 

Asked whether those deaths were connected with energy crisis, Buzmakov said that such facts have not been registered.  “The children’s deaths were caused by various diseases,” he said.   

According to him, 13,545 births have been registered in the province over the report period; 3,501 of them were the first labors.  Buzmakov added that home births accounted for 24.5 percent of the total number of births registered in Khatlon over the same three-month period.  

He also noted that five cases of maternal death have been registered in the province in January-March 2008.