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HUNGER, MALNUTRITION
& DISEASE
Somini Sengupta
of the New York Times (13 March 09) has one of those
front-page articles that makes you wonder if you want to keep reading. It's
titled
"As Indian Growth Soars, Child Hunger Persists,"
and the accompanying photo shows a tiny child being fed some sort of starchy
gruel. The baby seems a specter, so small and malnourished, and overwhelmed by
the size of the spoon approaching its mouth. As the article makes clear, India's
efforts to reduce child malnutrition have not been going well, and the country's
rates of child malnutrition are higher than many sub-Saharan nations:
China, that other Asian economic
powerhouse, sharply reduced child malnutrition, and now just
7 percent of its children under 5 are underweight,
a critical gauge of malnutrition. In India, by contrast, despite robust growth
and good government intentions, the comparable number is 42.5 percent.
Malnutrition makes children more prone to illness and stunts physical and
intellectual growth for a lifetime.
There are
no simple explanations.
Economists and public health experts say stubborn malnutrition rates point to a
central failing in this democracy of the poor.
Amartya Sen, the
Nobel prize-winning economist, lamented
that hunger was not enough of a political priority here. India’s public
expenditure on health remains low.
A
World Food Program report last month
noted that India remained home to more than a fourth of the world’s hungry, 230
million people in all. It also found anemia to be on the rise among rural women
of childbearing age in eight states across India. Indian women are often the
last to eat in their homes and often unlikely to eat well or rest during
pregnancy. Ms. Menon’s institute, based in Washington, recently ranked India
below two dozen sub-Saharan countries on its
Global Hunger Index.
Press Trust Of India
(Aug 05, 2008):
Over two million children in India die every year before their 5th year due to malnutrition,
pneumonia and diarrhoea, a
UNICEF report released last week said.
Around 2.1 million children died in India in 2006 while
the number was 4,15,000 in China. In 2004 and 2005, nearly four million
children had died in India.
The Indian Infant Mortality Rate is 57 per 1,000
births.
Among the causes:
inadequate nutrition, water
and sanitation, education, gender equality and child protection.
In India, one out of every three women is
underweight putting them at risk of having low birth weight babies and these
babies are 20 times more likely to die in infancy than healthy babies.CNN-IBN
(30 Mar 2008)
Over 6,000 children under the
age of six die in our country everyday from hunger and malnutrition; India
ranks 94th out of 118 countries on the Global
Hunger Index.
Example 1:
Jaharunnissah lost her only son to hunger about two months ago.
Khusbuddin, 4,.was nothing but skin and bones and weighed a mere six-and-a-half
kg at the time of his death. His mother says there was never enough to eat. "He
was malnourished. I could not give him milk and medicines due to lack of money.
So he died".
J was abandoned by her husband. She has a daughter and an ailing mother to take
care of but after an entire day's work of embroidering sarees she is paid a
meager Rs 10-15.
Example 2
In another village near Varanasi, Shamim, 6, is also battling malnutrition.
Unlike other kids his age, he is neither playful nor talkative. He has the
symbolic bloated belly (Kwashiorkor) and a weak immune system that has led to
further problems.
Zohra, Shamim's mother says "He is
suffering from TB and his liver is also damaged. His hands and feet are swollen
and he also complains of breathlessness."
Shamim's father Khursheed is a skilled handloom weaver but with the handloom
industry in decline, he has been reduced to a casual laborer. Embroidering
sarees is just not enough to make ends meet. He says: "We toil the entire day
and get Rs 50 but our expenses are Rs 150 per day. So we have to take loan. Even
after that we face hunger and cannot buy medicines. We don't even have proper
cloths".
Yahoo India News
April 22, 2006
Two-fifth of world's malnourished children are Indians, says UNICEF
UNICEF chief representative to India Cecilio Adorna said: "Under-nutrition
was the underlying cause for 50 per cent of the 2.1 million deaths of under-5
year olds in India each year…India accounted to 40 per cent of child
malnutrition in the world in spite of having implemented the 'Anganwadi'
system for several decades”
Adorna also highlighted that nearly 70 to 80 percent of
the Indian girl children are anaemic.
UNICEF in its earlier report on malnutrition had stated that "malnutrition is
more common in India than in Sub-Saharan Africa", the world's poorest and
backward region.
It also stated that Madhya Pradesh had the highest prevalence
of cases on malnutrition with 55 percent found to be under or severely
malnourished.
On18
Sep 08,
Kris Kumar
reported in
Countercurrents.org
on
Madhya Pradesh
“More
than 125 children have died in recent months due to malnutrition in districts of
Madhya Pradesh. Particularly the affected ones are Satna, Khandwa, Shivpuri, and
Sheopur districts of Madhya Pradesh in
India. But the state keeps denying these.
Instead the State Government has devised new measures that reduce numbers in
poverty and malnutrition. Asian Development Bank and UNICEF. ADB had held a
workshop in
Bhopal to redefine poverty through new indicators. A database
MPDevInfo is being developed by UNICEF in collaboration with Madhya Pradesh
Planning Commission. So while the State’s Women & Child Development Department
reports about 47 % level of malnutrition based on the new measures, the Central
Government data based on National Family Health Survey shows malnutrition at
level of 60 % in the State.”
Kalpana
Sharma IndiaTogether.org
17Nov 2007
Almost one in every two children
under three years of age is hungry - despite a
high growth rate.
When "dignitaries" visit poor villages, the
women sat on the ground while the visitors stood. One woman was asked to speak
for the rest. Instead of saying anything about lack of food, she said, "Give
us work". They say : we need work
first. All else will follow The majority of them are landless, or
with tiny landholdings. They get work at most for three months in a year in
the rice fields. Water for agriculture is available only during the rains. For a
day’s work, they are paid Rs.35, well below the minimum wage. The rest of the
year, work can be found some distance away. So, many of them have no choice
but to take their children and go off in search of work. Only the old people are
left behind.
Despite such poverty, the village has 12 "bachat
gaths" (self-help groups) where the women save between Rs. 20 to 50 a month.
Each group has 11 women. One woman a year is entitled to a loan. Most often this
money, around Rs. 10,000, is used for daily expenses. A few are prepared to be
adventurous and invest in livestock, a goat perhaps. Some of the women suggested
that such risks are a mistake. The last time someone bought goats, all died from
a disease. Only the debt remained.
A basic meal
The anganwadi, where young children get a meal, is sub-contracted to one
of these self-help groups in the belief that it will ensure that the children
get good quality food. In Maharashtra, this system appears to have worked. But
malnutrition is still as high as 40 per cent in
children under three. The children get a good dose of carbohydrate at lunchtime,
a mixture of broken wheat, oil and jaggery. But they may miss essential nutrients needed for growth, such as vitamins and
proteins, at the home meal. That is, if they can get
something to eat at home.
So, despite genuine efforts to deal with
hunger in young children, malnourishment is "normal" in a village like Dapcheri.
The majority of the children fell into the mild to moderate grade of
malnourishment. Only a small percentage of the children were "normal" weight for
age in accordance with government norms. In other words, the majority of the
children were already on the slippery slope of malnutrition. Only a small push,
such as a bad bout of diarrhoea, would push them down to a more acute stage.
An obscenity
Such hunger and poverty in the shadow of a metropolis like Mumbai with plenty is
an obscenity. Equally disturbing is the fact that most of the women and many of
the young girls were completely unlettered. A girl of around 18 said she had
never been to school. Her mother too could not read. While the women were proud
of their savings groups, they also admitted that their illiteracy made them open
to exploitation. One woman told us how her group’s savings of Rs. 50,000 over
seven years disappeared because they could not read the paper on which they gave
their thumb impressions. They have no idea who withdrew the money from the bank.
But it was gone. As a result, they wound up their group. What was the point, she
asked?
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