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Patna,(BiharTimes): Though Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday called the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement on malnourished children as unfortunate the fact remains that Bihar accounts for highest number of malnourished and underweight children. Against the country-wide figure of 42 per cent under-weight children the percentage for Bihar stands at 58. |
Not only that 80% of children below five years of age are malnourished, the worst in the country.
This notwithstanding tall claims of the state government that several initiatives have been taken to address malnutrition, particularly among children, adolescent girls and pregnant women.
Around two-thirds of women in child bearing age are malnourished in the state, once again the highest in India.
High incidence of malnutrition among children can be attributed to several factors which include low intake of nutritious food, non-availability of quality health services, absence of adequate community workers, low institutional delivery and non-access to cheap medicines. These apart, social practices such as early marriage and pregnancy and lack of breastfeeding, too, contribute to higher malnutrition rate in the state. There are other hindrances, too, that include low birth weight babies, non-spacing of children and anaemia among women.
As 80% of children born after 2007, that is below five, are underweight the data clearly indicate that things have hardly improved in this direction even during the present regime.
The above figures clear suggest that the state government’s initiative in this direction has hardly reached the bottom of the society and the centrally-sponsored Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) is not running properly.
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