2019 – Posted in: RSTV – Tags: Illiteracy, malnutrition, POSHAN Abhiyaan, Poshan Atlas

Fight against Malnutrition

In News

In a bid to tackle malnutrition, the government is developing an Atlas to map the crops and food grains grown in different regions of the country so that nutritious protein-rich food in local areas can be promoted.

Introduction

Malnutrition contributed 68.2 percent of deaths of children under the age of five years in 2017 in India. As per the recent report of India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative, the health targets of Poshan Abhiyaan (2022) and WHO and UNICEF targets of 2030 will not be achieved in most Indian States. In a bid to tackle malnutrition, the government in developing a ‘Poshan-atlas’ to map the crops and food grains grown in different regions of the country so that nutritious and protein-rich food in local areas can be promoted. Poshan Abhiyaan is focusing on ensuring the nutrition of children, women, and pregnant mothers in impoverished areas.

What is Malnutrition?

Malnutrition is a complex and multi-dimensional issue, primarily caused by several factors like poverty, inadequate food consumption, and improper food distribution, improper maternal and restricted access to quality food, health, education, and social services. It persists in India because of the old-age patterns of social and economic exclusion.

Causes of Malnutrition

The causes of malnutrition are multidimensional. They include:

Household food insecurity
Illiteracy especially in women
Poor access to health services
Lack of availability of safe drinking water
Poor sanitation and environmental conditions
Early marriages of girls
Poor breastfeeding practices
Ignorance about the nutritional needs of infants and young children and repeated infections further aggravate the situation

Other factors such as environmental, geographical, agricultural, and cultural including various other factors have contributively effects resulting in malnutrition.

POSHAN Abhiyaan

It is an initiative by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in collaboration with the Deendayal Research Institute and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
This is done to promote regional cropping pattern and nutritious food in local areas so that the adequate proteins and vitamins can be provided to the local peoples.
This initiative is focusing on ensuring the nutrition of women, children and pregnant mothers.
It was launched in March 2018. The Abhiyaan targets to reduce stunting, undernutrition, anemia, and reduce low birth weight. The target is to bring down stunting among children in the age group 0-6 years from 38.4% to 25% by 2022.
It also aims to ensure service delivery and interventions by use of technology, behavioural change, and lays down specific targets to be achieved across different monitoring parameters.
Under Poshan Abhiyaan, Government announced the entire month of September 2019 to be ‘Rashtriya Poshan Maah’ with the theme of ‘Complementary Feeding.’

Need for Poshan Atlas

It is difficult to come out with a single common solution to address malnutrition in India due to different cropping patterns across the country. Hence, to tackle malnutrition, Poshan will be promoting regional cropping patterns and embracing local protein-rich food.

Can India achieve malnutrition free targets by 2022?

Prime Minister has taken a pledge to make India malnutrition free by 2022 and that’s why September month is being observed as National Nutrition Month to raise awareness.
When Mission Indradhanush was launched, India’s annual rate of increase in the coverage of child vaccination used to be just about 1 percent before 2015 but Mission Indradhanush set itself ambitious targets to raise it to 5 percent a year and actually surpassed that target and now achieving 7 percent per year.
The problem of wasting and stunting is not decreasing at the expected rate. But still, different stakeholders are collaborating in this mission to work closely to achieve these important targets.

Challenges in tackling malnutrition problem

Lack of awareness is a big problem. Malnutrition includes wasting, stunting, underweight, and overweight, obesity, and resulting in diet-related diseases.
Primary Health infrastructure is not as strong as it should be. The entire health sector focuses on treatment in India.
As per the National Family Health Survey-4, the decrease in underweight children was only 10% and wasting increased by 3%.
The survey also shows that stunting has also decreased only by 7% across India.
India’s budget financing of the Health sector has been largely skewed towards secondary and tertiary rates. Countries like the UK, Sweden, and Brazil has to push the maximum amount of their budgets into strengthening the best primary health care.
The availability of food is only a major challenge but the second big challenge being neglected is that there are ranges of infections and diseases that exacerbate the child undernutrition situation.

About Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS)

It was conducted for the first time in Asia by UNICEF and the Ministry of Health. It collected and analyzed the blood samples of children to know more about the hidden level of undernutrition.
The macro, as well as micronutrient gaps in India, has been analyzed in this survey. Undernutrition is categorized as macronutrient deficiency and micronutrient deficiency.
It was also found that there is a significant level of decline in the Iodine deficiencies level in children. There is also low iron deficiency in children which was found by measuring the anemia level and serum ferritin level which is iron intake indication.
It was also found that children are undernutrition as well as over nutrition.
40% of pre-school children and 24% of school-going children are anaemic. Female adolescents had a higher prevalence of anaemia that is 40% as compared to the male adolescents which are only 18%.
States like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh has a high level of undernutrition.

Way Forward

Strengthening our primary health care system
Health education activity must be improved. Education, awareness should be given to children as to what is important and what is not.
Improved child feeding practices across the country
Measures to manage low birth weight issues, by addressing issues in the adolescent period that can make really a major difference.

Summary

The problem of hunger, poverty and malnutrition has been trailing our country for years now.
The latest GHI report has indicated that in India the malnutrition among children has come down from 43.5% in 2005 to 30.7% in 2014 in India.
The latest report also shows that schemes like ICDS, NRHM, NREGA, midday meals scheme and food security schemes have proved to be helpful.
We are still falling back at the Interdepartmental linkage issues.
As per the report, the first 1000 days are crucial in a child’s life. It directly impacts the cognitive abilities and learning abilities of the children.

Source: RSTC

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