NEW DELHI: The Union Minister for Women and Child Development, Smiriti Zubin Irani, on Thursday,
expressed concern over serious malnutrition among children in many states including Meghalaya and sought a humane solution to tackle the menace.
Meghalaya has recorded a high percentage of stunting among children from birth to four years of age, as per the Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS) 2016-2018. The survey is the first nationally representative nutrition survey of children and adolescents in the country.
The union minister was chairing the 5th National Council on India’s Nutrition Challenges here. She also quoted the World Bank Global Nutrition Report – 2018, which says that malnutrition costs India at least USD 10 billion annually in terms of lost productivity, illness and death and is seriously retarding improvements in human development and further reduction of childhood mortality.
Irani was stressing on ‘POSHAN’ which is an exercise for life for all citizens and said that it should not be limited to women and children.
The CNNS survey found that in Meghalaya, 40.4 per cent of children from birth to 4 years suffer from stunting while the national average is around 35 per cent.
In fact, Meghalaya is just below Bihar (42 per cent) when it comes to the percentage of prevalence of stunting among children in the age group. A number of the most populous states, including Bihar, Madhya Pradesh Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh had a high (37 to 42 per cent) stunting prevalence.
The lowest prevalence of stunting (16 to 21 per cent) was found in Goa and Jammu and Kashmir. A higher prevalence in under-fives was found in rural areas (37 per cent) compared to urban areas (27 per cent).
Moreover, children in the poorest wealth quintile were more likely to be stunted (49 per cent), as compared to 19 per cent in the richest quintile. Stunting or low height-for-age is a sign of chronic under-nutrition that reflects failure to receive adequate nutrition over a long period and is also affected by recurrent and chronic illness.
Children are defined as stunted if their height-for-age is more than two standard deviations below the WHO Child Growth Standards median (WHO, 2009). Moreover, the survey found out that overall 17 per cent of children between birth and four years were wasted. States with high prevalence of wasting include Madhya Pradesh, Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand.
The prevalence of wasting in these states was around 20 per cent. The states with the lowest prevalence of under-five wasting were Manipur, Mizoram and Uttarakhand (six per cent each).
A higher proportion of children under five years of age in the poorest wealth quintile were wasted (21per cent) compared to those in the highest wealth quintile (13 per cent).
Wasting, or low weight-for-height, is a measure of acute under-nutrition and represents the failure to receive adequate nutrition leading to rapid weight loss or failure to gain weight normally.
Overall, the findings report that 35 per cent among children under five years of age were stunted, 17 per cent were wasted and 33 per cent were underweight.
Moreover, in school-age children (five to nine years), the survey revealed that 22 per cent of children were stunted, 10 per cent were underweight, 23 per cent were thin while four per cent were obese or overweight.
In the age group of 10 to 19 years, 24 per cent of adolescents were thin for their age, five per cent were overweight or obese. To provide robust data on the shifting conditions of both under-nutrition and overweight and obesity, the Union ministry of health conducted the survey to collect a comprehensive set of data on nutritional status of children from birth to 19 years of age.
This survey conducted by the Ministry of Health, which was the largest micro nutrient survey ever implemented globally, used gold standard methods to assess anaemia, micro nutrient deficiencies and biomarkers of non-communicable diseases for the first time in the country.