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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Policy on child malnutrition uses old data -Rema Nagarajan

Policy on child malnutrition uses old data -Rema Nagarajan

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published Published on Mar 12, 2015   modified Modified on Mar 12, 2015
-The Times of India

Prime Minister Modi said child malnutrition would be tackled on a "mission mode", his predecessor called it a national shame. Yet, policymaking is dependent on malnutrition data from 2005-06, with the data from the Rapid Survey on Children (RSOC) carried out by Unicef and the women and child development (WCD) ministry in 2013 yet to be made available. The data was sent to the health ministry for review about six months back by the WCD ministry , but nothing has moved since.

The RSOC to survey malnutrition and hunger was conducted after pressure from civil society groups and public health and nutrition experts who stressed on the need to monitor nutrition figures for advocacy and scientific policy making. According to Unicef, the RSOC data was handed over to the WCD ministry in September 2014 and summary data was available to the ministry as far back as June. WCD ministry officials told TOI that the data was sent in September to the health ministry and to the ministry of statistics and programme implementation to be reviewed. "We cannot release the data till it has been reviewed. We are yet to hear from the health ministry or statistics department," said a WCD official.

Public health and nutrition experts expressed dismay at the lack of urgency within the government on getting the data meant to guide policy decisions. "We haven't done a single comprehensive national survey on nutrition since the National Family Health Survey in 200506. Other countries do such national surveys every three or five years," said Purnima Menon of International Food Policy Research Institute.

Some of the 'provisional' national level figures for underweight, stunted and wasted children were given by the WCD ministry to IFPRI to prepare the global hunger index and the global nutrition report, which came out in October last year.

These provisional figures suggest a considerable improvement in nutritional status in India. Over 8 years, the proportion of children classified as stunted declined from 48% to 38.8%, those underweight from 42.5% to 30.7%, and those wasted from 19.8% to 15%. "That was expected. A combination of economic growth and social sector programmes in India is the typical combination in place in countries which have shown improvement in nutrition. There is still a long way to go and national level figures are not good enough. The data is especially important for states to develop nutrition strategies," said Menon.

"After being shamed internationally for the abysmal record on malnutrition, it is really surprising that the government is not keen to release data that shows the considerable progress we have made. The improvement does not fit into the crisis narrative being used by commercial food companies to convert malnutrition and hunger into a market for their so-called fortified products," said Prof HPS Sachdev, senior consultant in paediatrics and clinical epidemiology, Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Science and Research.

The Times of India, 11 March, 2015, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Policy-on-child-malnutrition-uses-old-data/articleshow/46523739.cms


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