Can you believe that India is still vastly hungrier than Africa! Yes, it is true that though there is steady and widespread fall in malnutrition, but we still lack behind. According to study by UNICEF; In India 20% of children under 5 years suffers from wasting. 43% children under 5 years are underweight and 48% are stunted due to chronic malnutrition. There is an improvement in the statistics due to rapid economic growth and rising household incomes and also more spending on midday meals in India, Madhya Pradesh has cut the proposition of its children who go hungry from 60% to 36%, Bihar from 56% to 37%. Maharashtra from 37% to 25%.
Even after such improvement in UP children are still below normal height and weight. The most common reason is that mothers are undernourished themselves. Mothers and girls get less food to eat, less health care and lack of education than males. More than half of the girls aged between 15-18 had low Body Mass Index, which are more liker to produce undernourished babies.
In India :
1) Only 25% of newborns are put to breast within one hour of birth.
2) Only 20% of children are fed appropriately.
3) More than 70% children are anaemic and many other problems.
Amartya Sen nobel prize winner economist says Mr. Modi doesn’t provise strong leadership on health policy. He notes that spending in health care fell this year’s national budget. India is hardly devoting 1% of GDP to it. Even in African countries, proposition of children who are underweight is 21% well below India’s level. To improve India’s status country has to act like Maharashtra where they have excellently handled malnutrition, they have identified 4 crucial changes that are :
a) better and more frequent feeding of infants
b) more care for pregnant women
c) higher household incomes
d) rise in age at which women begin having babies.
There is an urgent need for some strong policies to be implemented to improve the status of health in India.
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22 Comments. Leave new
Very informative!
Great work! All states should learn from Maharashtra’s example.
Malnutrition is a major issue that needs immediate attention 😀 .
Governement has introduced new plans to face all this problem :D.
One such is Mid Day meal 😀
Nice work by putting light on it 😀
Such a bad scenario of India, Indian government urgently need to implement policies to eradicate these problems !
🙂
This is a serious issue which needs to be address at the latest. We need a healthy growing population. Rather than wasting money on warfare lets focus on providing the basic things such as food to the children. Nice article 🙂
Nice 😀
Very well written!
well constructed!
good job 🙂
Right… The steps mentioned above will bring about a lot of change.. Women and children should get sufficient food too.. Great work!
Nice article
Good one!
Indian govt needs to pay attention to this chronic issue neglecting which can result in a great decline in efficiency and development of our country
Good one
Very well written
It is degrading on a daily basis there’s extreme paucity of food in some areas the government needs to step into the picture with dramatic reforms very well written prache great efforts
Well written. India’s situation is truly a sorry state.
Hope it is encouraged to improve nutrition…. Nice article
Well researched content. Govt. need to take the issue more seriously.
Informative. Good job!
good one
Well written, but the stats and data should have been backed up by reliable source. Increases the legitimacy of the article 🙂
Good one