Malnutrition among Indian Children

Abstract

To have a sustainable and steady economic development in an economy it is a prerequisite that its children should be healthy, educated and trained. Many children in India are illiterates and unskilled and the problem of malnutrition is rampant. It is still having the largest number of malnourished children in the world [1]. In absolute number, it is 26 million [2]. On the basis of data available in 2015, the rate of stunting was 38.7% and wasting 15.1%. The overall rank of India in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2015 was 93 with a score of 31.1 [3]. It is also reported that in India, the per capita disease burden due to child and maternal malnutrition is 12 times higher than that is in China [4]. Even in 2019, the rate of stunting stands at 37.9% and wasted is close to 21%. India’s rank in the Global Hunger Index 2019 is 102 out of 117 countries taken for comparison with a score of 30.3. It is sad to note that even Sri Lanka (66), Nepal (73), Bangladesh (88) and Pakistan (94) are in better positions in nutrition standard than India [5-7]. While the rate of stunting decreased from 42% in 2010 to 37.9% in 2019, (54.2% in 2000) the rate of wasting increased from 17.1% in 19982002 [7] to almost 21% in 2019 (GHI 2019). Every year India adds seven million potentially wasted and stunted children to its population.