NAN-F-28
Children
New Delhi, March 6, 2017 (dpa/NAN) An official Indian survey on Monday found that over 58 per cent of children below five years of age in that country were anaemic.
The country’s National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2015-2016 showed that 58.4 per cent or around 72 million children were anaemic.
It also found that there was high level of stunting, noting that anaemic children had lower than average levels of haemoglobin in their blood, leaving them exhausted, vulnerable to infections, likely to affect their brain development.
The survey showed that 38 per cent of children or nearly 50 million individuals in the same age group were stunted, 21 per cent wasted and 36 per cent were found to be underweight.
Wasting is described as low weight compared to height, stunting as low height compared to age and underweight as low weight for age.
Child health experts said India had improved on internationally accepted parameters of child health since the last NFHS survey in 2005-2006.
The experts said India still had severe levels of undernourishment among children, mainly due to poverty.
“There is an improvement in some areas, such as incidence of anaemia that has dropped from 69.4 per cent in 2005-6.
“However on parameters like complementary feeding (giving an infant foods in addition to milk) after the baby has completed six months, there has not been much progress,” UNICEF Nutrition Specialist, Gayatri Singh, said.
Food quality, poor sanitation and hygiene have also been identified as key reasons behind child undernutrition in India.
The report said that nutritional situation in India is among the worst in the world.
India has serious levels of widespread hunger and a low ranking of 97 among 118 developing countries, according to the Global Hunger Index 2016.
There is criticism that Indian policy makers have been unable to address the endemic crisis of hunger in the country, which ironically is the fastest growing major economy in the world.
Indian expenditure on healthcare is a little over 1 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, while the global average healthcare outlay stands at around 6 per cent.
Although India’s newborn death rate of 41 per 1,000 live births and child mortality rate of 50 per 1,000 live births had shown declines, the numbers are still seen to be too high.
The survey also showed increase in immunisation coverage and a positive trend in indicators of women’s empowerment, like literacy, with more women holding bank accounts and participating in household decisions. (dpa/NAN)
OYE/HA
=======
Edited by Celine-Damilola Oyewole/Hadiza Mohammed-Aliyu