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A call to overcome malnutrition in India
Highlights
Malnourishment affects one in three people worldwide and is linked to 45% of deaths among children under the age of five, the “staggering” scale of the condition could undermine the sustainable development agenda
Malnourishment affects one in three people worldwide and is linked to 45% of deaths among children under the age of five, the “staggering” scale of the condition could undermine the sustainable development agenda without greater investment from governments and donors yet the strategies available to resolve it are not being implemented due to lack of money, skills, or political pressure, according to a report on global nutrition 2015 that warns and calls for proper data, increased funding.
Flagging the importance of nutrition as a ‘driver of change or a barrier to progress, the report emphasized that public health risk due to malnutrition - including under-nutrition, obesity, and micro-nutrient deficiencies - is a concern for every country. The report quoted that “Noting the co-existence of extreme deprivation and obesity as the real face of malnutrition and this not only jeopardises the lives of those who are malnourished, but also affects the larger framework for economic growth and sustainable development”. It means the people cannot get anywhere near their full potential without first overcoming malnutrition.
Expressing concern over lack of proper data on nutrition in most countries, the report said healthy children are the minority in at least five large countries. Citing the example of India, it said the country undertook 14 major nutrition surveys between 1992 and 2014, “but taken together these surveys provide few opportunities for consistent tracking over time at the national level.”
Stunted, under-weight
Over 160 million children worldwide under five years age old are too short for their age (stunted), while more than 50 million don’t weigh enough for their height (wasted). Although countries are increasingly meeting goals for combating stunting and wasting, adult obesity—another form of malnutrition—is growing. The prevalence of obesity rose in every single country between 2010 and 2014, and one in 12 adults worldwide now has Type 2 diabetes. Adult diabetes is increasing in 185 countries and is decreasing or stable in just five.
Climate Change Affects
Another finding of the report is that climate change affects nutrition by influencing people’s food security, disease levels and patterns, water and sanitation environments, and choices about how to allocate time to their livelihoods and to care giving.
Seasonal changes can have big impacts on food availability and disease patterns, and these in turn dramatically affect children’s survival and development. This means, for example, that babies born in India in November and December are taller on average at 3 years of age than those born in April through September.
Sustainable Development Goals
A problem of staggering size, malnutrition is widespread enough to threaten the world’s sustainable development ambitions. It also calls upon government and businesses to increase funding for improving nutrition. It argued that “improvements in nutrition status will be central to the sustainable development agenda.” Poor nutrition doesn’t just represent a lack of nutritious and safe food; it derives from a host of interacting processes that link health care, education, sanitation and hygiene, access to resources, women’s empowerment and more.
As good nutrition leads to higher individual earnings and mental acuity, which in turn support macroeconomic and societal growth. Malnutrition impairs individual productivity, which acts as a drag on national macroeconomic growth. In this sense, poor nutrition represents an often invisible impediment to the successful achievement of all development targets. Conversely, good nutrition needs to be understood and positioned as both an input to, and an outcome of, the success of the SDGs as a whole.
Key findings
· Global progress to reduce malnutrition has been slow and uneven.
· Nearly half of all countries face multiple serious burdens of malnutrition such as poor child growth, micronutrient deficiency, and adult overweight and obesity.
· Critical relationship between climate change and nutrition, as well as the pivotal role business can play in advancing nutrition.
· It considers how countries can build food systems that are more nutrition friendly and sustainable.
· In the absence of a “magic bullet,” global alliances including a wide range of stakeholders are required over a sustained period to generate substantial improvements in nutritional status at the national level;
· The share of nutrition-sensitive investments in agriculture, social protection, water, sanitation and hygiene, education, and women’s empowerment programs needs to expand in order to reach nutrition targets.
Indian scenario:
Recognizing the significance of nutrition, the government of India recently has released malnutrition data from the Rapid Survey on Children (RSoC) that was collected in 2013-14. It was found that 29.4 percent of children (aged less than three years) were to be underweight (low in weight for their age), while 15 percent were wasted (low weight for their height) and 38.7 percent were stunted (low in height for age).
On the face of it, this compares well with the NFHS-3 data, in which the corresponding figures were 40.4 percent (underweight), 22.9 percent (wasted) and 44.9 percent (stunted). But in absolute terms, the current levels of underweight and stunted children are abysmally high and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s assertion that malnutrition is a “national shame” is still valid. The way forward requires a reorientation of Indian research to inform policy and practice and change the current tenor of policy discussions. The Make in India call should apply no less to research and practice.
G. Rajendera Kumar
The author is Deputy Statistical Officer, Planning Department in Telangana State.
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