Poorva Chavan
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Written By: Poorva Chavan | Published : January 21, 2015 11:34 AM IST
Children need to be fed well in order to have positive health outcomes. © Shutterstock
New Delhi, Jan 20 : India is a country ridden by problems like malnutrition, taking lives of thousands of children every year. A serious issue like this needs to be addressed on urgent basis and a conference held in the capital urged the government to initiate urgent and proactive measures to tackle this issue. ( Read: Uttar Pradesh launches nutrition mission to end malnutrition in state)
Addressing the issue of malnutrition, experts at a recent event titled Acute Malnutrition-An Everyday Emergency , said that children in India, belonging to lower income groups like dalits, adivasis, OBCs and rural communities suffer most from malnutrition and around one million die every year due to this problem.
The number of children affected in India is higher than all South Asian countries high burden of wasting or acute malnutrition, quoted a report presented at the conference. The report also said, Within India, Scheduled Tribes (28 percent), Scheduled Castes (21 percent) and other backward castes (20 percent) and rural communities (21 percent) have a high burden of acute malnutrition.
A multi-sectoral action plan has been implemented in the state of Maharashtra to tackle malnutrition which has seen success, but has failed to create the same effect in tribal area of the state, informed Vanadana Krishna, Director General of Maharashtra's successful Rajmata Jijau Mother Child Health and Nutrition Mission. The government needs to address the issue on a mission mode to save the lives of a million children, opined Rajiv Tandon, Deputy Country Director, ACF-India. He also said that the Prime Minister should give this issue a new direction. ( Read: India lags behind targets set for reducing malnutrition and infant deaths)
The problem that plagues India s malnutrition campaigns is that treatment for acute malnutrition is very low and the conference suggested that treatment programmes need to be scaled up urgently in the country. Addressing the participants, Minister of State for Rural Development Sudarshan Bhagat spoke about the steps taken by the government to address the problem and said that he would convey the message of the conference before the highest level.
With inputs from PTI
Image source: Getty Images
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