Table of Contents
Context
- A report published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health gives comprehensive estimates of disease burden due to child and maternal malnutrition and the trends of its indicators in every state of India from 1990 to 2017.
Findings
- The death rate attributable to malnutrition in under-5 children in India has dropped by twothirds from 1990 to 2017.
- Malnutrition is, however, still the underlying risk factor for 68% of the deaths in under-five children in India.
Under 5 mortality
- The proportion of under-5 deaths attributable to malnutrition, which is 68.2% across India, ranges between a high of 72.7% in Bihar and a low of 50.8% in Kerala.
- Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh are states with a high such proportion, while Meghalaya, Tamil Nadu, Mizoram and Goa have the lowest proportions of such deaths.
Food and Nutrition Security Analysis
- The Food and Nutrition Security Analysis, India, 2019, a report by the MoSPI and The World Food Programme lists Maharashtra as one of the six States with high levels of stunting and underweight.
- The State also has a prevalence of stunting and wasting.
- Here’s a look at the highlights of the report and overall malnutrition in Maharashtra.
Malnutrition
- Malnutrition, in all its forms, includes undernutrition (wasting, stunting, underweight) inadequate vitamins or minerals, overweight, obesity, and resulting diet-related noncommunicable diseases.
National Nutrition Mission
- It aims to reduce undernutrition, anemia (among young children, women and adolescent girls) and low birth weight by 2%, 3% and 2% per annum respectively.
- It also aims to reduce stunting (a measure of malnutrition that is defined as the height that is significantly below the norm for age) by 2% a year, bringing down the proportion of stunted children in the population to 25% by 2022.
Way Forward
- Increasing the diversity of foods consumed (dietary diversity)
- Food fortification
- Supplementation
- Public health measures
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