Child Malnutrition

India has very high child malnutrition rates:study
JOSEPH VACKAYIL
Posted online: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 at 0000 hours IST

CHENNAI, OCT 17: Lack of improvement in per capita food availability during 1997-2003 and very high levels of child malnutrition rates have made the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) give India the same hunger score of 25.73 in 2003 as in 1997 in the Global Hunger Index (GHI). Answering FE ‘s queries,via e-mail, IFPRI researcher and author of the GHI, Doris Torif Wiesmann, said, “There are two major reasons why the Global Hunger Index for India did not improve from 1997 to 2003: per capita food availability did not increase, and child malnutrition rates remained at very high levels, with more than 46% of children under five being underweight”. Commenting on these two problem in India, she said India ranks 96th among 119 developing countries and countries in transition in the Global Hunger Index, but ranks 117th with regard to child malnutrition - only Bangladesh and Nepal exceed the very high Indian prevalence rate of underweight in children. Weismann said, the recent proportion of children underweight in India is 47.5% higher than the proportion of children underweight in Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. This is astonishing given the fact that a higher proportion of the population is food energy deficient in Sub-Saharan Africa (33%) than in India (21%) , according to FAO estimates.