Today we are celebrating the World Health Day and the problem of malnutrition among the children is one salient factor to be addressed.
CRY (Child Right and You), the NGO has unleashed the data of National Family Health Survey. In this, the state has been pictured as slowcoach in terms of child nutrition. The report says that, only 3% of age group of under get the “balanced diet”. Where the infant babies are getting breast feed for at least three times and many others are getting milk products for two times a day.
The problem is malnutrition is so deeply ingrained that the mothers are not even able to detect it amidst them.
In the year 2015, the state government checked 12 lakh children and the government rolled out the data that only 4,000 of them as “severely acutely malnourished” (SAM).
Also, the Woman and Child Development Department and Unicef found out that only 35% of under five children are famished and are going malnourished. A massive amount has been detected from Baran and Sahariya tribals.
Previous year, a paper was published in the Economic and Political some recognizable people Pavitra Mohan, Kumaril Agarwal and Priyanka Jain highlighted that malnutrition has become a new normal.
Angus Deaton, the economist and Nobel Prize also spoke on this grave issue and blamed the low key sanitation and infections in India.
The notable point is that, children lack in important nutrients like fat and protein. The grave issue is that, this is leading them to early death and many hazardous diseases. The data of NHFS is disturbing depicting that in every lakh, 41 babies are die dueto low nutrition and 50 can’t survive after the age of five.
The authors have figured that, “only about 28% of the children consumed milk. Almost none of them had consumed egg, meat or fish over the last 24 hours. Fewer than 10% reported consuming appropriate and nutritional food items such as ‘daliya’ (porridge), rice, pulses and vegetables or fruits, and even those had it in small quantities. A significant proportion of children were given tea, biscuits and and ‘namkeen’ (fried snacks)”. One mother reported that she only bought milk when the child fell sick. “Otherwise, we cannot afford milk”.
