Nutrition for Malnourished Children

""For the hungry, God is bread." "

...Mahatma Gandhi

Nutrition is key to the health and well-being of human beings and directly linked to a country's human resource development, productivity and growth. In India, preventing malnutrition is one of the major challenges faced by the Government being a problem that not only undermines the survival, growth and development of children, but also diminishes the strength and the capacity of the country.

About twenty percent of children in India under the age of five suffer from wasting illnesses due to acute malnutrition. More than one-third of the world's children who suffer from wasting illnesses live in India.

Approximately 43 percent of children in India under five years are underweight and 48 percent (upwards of 61 million children) are stunted due to a chronic lack nutrition. India accounts for more than three out of every ten stunted children in the world. Malnutrition is said to be the underlying cause for about 54 per cent of the 2.1 million under-5 deaths in India each year.

The 2005-06 National Family Health Survey showed that young children in India suffer from some of the highest levels of stunting, underweight and wasting observed in any country in the world, and seven out of every ten young children in the country are anemic.

Reports suggest that the percentage of children under the age of five who are underweight is almost twnety times as high in India as would be expected in a healthy, well-nourished population and almost twice as high as the percentage of underweight children in sub-Saharan African countries.

Reports also noted that, between 2003 and 2007, the nutritional status of children under five was measured in Demographic and Health Surveys in the same way in 41 developing countries. The studies revealed that the prevalence of underweight in children was higher in India than in any of the other 40 countries, but was only slightly higher than the prevalence in Bangladesh and Nepal.

The figures also reveal some other important facts:

* Malnutrition is substantially higher in rural areas than in urban areas The percentage of children who are severely underweight is almost five times higher among children whose mothers have no education
* Undernutrition is more common for children of mothers who are undernourished themselvesUndernutrition is more common for children of mothers who are undernourished themselves
* Children from the Scheduled Tribes have the poorest nutritional status and there is a high level of wasting sickness in this group
Malnutrition can be prevented by taking care of children in the first two years of life, girls during adolescence, and mothers during pregnancy and lactation.
Other interventions that can help include complementary feeding practices, counseling for care-givers on feeding and care practices and on optimal use of locally available foods, improving access to quality foods for poor families through social protection intiatives, and the provision of fortified foods and micronutrients when needed.

Clearly, malnutrition is a complex phenomenon, being both the cause and effect of poverty and ill health. It is linked with illiteracy, especially female illiteracy, lack of safe drinking water and proper sanitation, ignorance, lack of awareness and ill health. It creates its own cycle within the large cycle of poverty.

If India is to overcome these nutritional challenges, it will have to ensure that the problem is accorded the highest priority and that large investments are made in nutrition interventions and poverty alleviation programs. It will need targeted nutrition interventions to prevent mild and moderate malnutrition and should treat severe malnutrition as part of a continuum of care for children, especially the most vulnerable among them.

Clearly, the prevention and treatment of child malnutrition in the first two years of life needs to be a national development priority.



We at the Tej Kohli Foundation are decided to helping India meet this challenge so that, at a time when the country's economy is growing at an enviable rate, its most precious assets, its children, survive and thrive. Sixty million children are waiting. Will we, as a society, come up with the right responses?