38% of India’s under-5 children are stunted: Report

BOTTOM 10 COUNTRIES

Two in five children below the age of five in India are stunted due to severe undernourishment, a global report has said, highlighting a stubborn problem in child health, which otherwise has shown improvement in India.

NGO Save the Children’s End of Childhood Report 2018, which was released on Wednesday and has data from 175 countries, shows 38.4% children below the age of five are stunted, a marginal improvement from 39% the previous year.

Stunted children’s growth and development is impaired. Such children are vulnerable to repeated infections that can also effect brain development, which can create learning problems.

India’s battle with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) has been hard and long. The World Health Organisation defines it as a very low weight for height, visible severe wasting or the presence of nutritional oedema (swelling).

According to National Family Health Survey-4, about 7.5% of country’s under-five children are severely wasted, means they are underweight.

The government has set up around 1,000 rehabilitation centres in its hospitals for such children as part of a string of initiatives under the National Health Mission (NHM).

National Health Mission aims to improve healthcare by strengthening primary infrastructure, with special focus on improving on mother and child.

Only 7 to 10% SAM children require hospitalisation and most are managed within the community.

“It continues to be a challenge to manage these children but most states have extremely wellutilised rehabilitation services for these children, and there are protocols in place to provide quality care to them,” said Manoj Jhalani, mission director, NHM, Union health ministry.

“We are doing our best to ensure those states that are not able to optimally utilise these services also catch up.”

The second big challenge that emerges from the report is that of adolescent pregnancy. In India, the number of births per 1,000 girls aged 15-19 is 23.3%, which means almost one in four girls is a mother before she is even 20. (Rank wise) Singapore Slovenia Norway Sweden Finland Ireland Netherlands Iceland

Italy

South Korea (Rank wise)

DR Congo Sierra Leone Guinea Nigeria Somalia

South Sudan Chad

Central African Republic Mali

Niger

NEW DELHI:

rate Under-5 mortality live births) (deaths per 1000

Child stunting months) (children ages 0-59 Out-of-school and children of primary age secondary school

Children engaged 5-17) in child labour (ages Adolescents or in currently married

15-19) unison (girls aged rate Adolescent birth 15-19) (per 1000 girls aged