{"id":73547,"date":"2020-12-18T18:01:11","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T12:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=73547"},"modified":"2021-01-27T11:47:30","modified_gmt":"2021-01-27T06:17:30","slug":"nutritional-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/nutritional-agenda\/","title":{"rendered":"Nutritional agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Context:\u00a0<\/strong>The fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS 2019-20) factsheets on the burden of child under nutrition is not encouraging.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How is under nutrition measured?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Relied on the measure of a child\u2019s anthropometry<\/strong>: Children are defined as stunted, underweight or wasted if their standardised height-for-age, weight-for-age or weight-for-height is more than two standard deviations below the (WHO) Child Growth Standards median.\n<ul>\n<li>However, under nutrition can also be measured by observing the adequacy and sufficiency of food or dietary intake among children.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What is the status of under nutrition in the fifth round of NFHS report?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>NFHS-4 (2015-16):<\/strong>\u00a0The percentage of children (aged 6-23 months) who do not meet the minimum dietary adequacy as defined under the Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) practices by WHO is 83.9%; a decline of just over 2 percentage points.\n<ul>\n<li>Thus, eight out of 10 children appear to be experiencing a dietary shortfall.<\/li>\n<li>Analysis based on NFHS-4 has shown that consumption of protein-rich food as well as fruit and vegetables were substantially low.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Dietary adequacy:<\/strong>\u00a0Goa experienced the largest percentage point decline (11.1%), and Jammu and Kashmir observed the highest increase in its percentage of children not meeting dietary adequacy over the last three years (76.5% to 86.4%).\n<ul>\n<li>While there are some variations, in every State more than 75% of the children do not receive the minimum adequate diet.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Anaemia prevalence<\/strong>: Anaemia prevalence among children increased by about eight percentage points from 51.8% to 60.2%. The prevalence of anaemia in childhood increased in 18 of the 22 States\/Union Territories.\n<ul>\n<li>In the majority of the States, two out of three children have possible iron-deficiency. The State-wise trends for adults are mixed, although it is clear that women are substantially at a far greater risk for anaemia than men.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What are the steps to be taken?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Initiatives:<\/strong>\u00a0(POSHAN) Abhiyaan and the Anemia Mukt Bharat or AMB Strategy was launched in 2018 with efforts to improve Iron and Folic Acid (IFA) supplementation.\n<ul>\n<li>Behaviour change and anaemia-related care and treatment across six target groups including pregnant women, lactating mothers, and children, and the provisional verdict is mixed for women and concerning for children.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Typology:<\/strong>\u00a0A classification of nutritional status using a combined typology based on children who experience dietary failure and anthropometric failure is crucial.\n<ul>\n<li>A recent NFHS-4 based study using this typology found that 36.3% of children who experienced a dietary failure do not show anthropometric failure.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Nutrition agenda:<\/strong>\u00a0Dietary factors can clearly be a major determinant of stagnancy in the nutritional status of Indian children. Therefore the nutrition agenda needs to be considered from \u201cfood as a right\u201d perspective.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Quality data:<\/strong>\u00a0Data available in a timely manner and in public domain, is empowering, as the NFHS has demonstrated over the last 25-plus years. But systematic and quality data on what Indians eat remains largely unknown.\n<ul>\n<li>A modern data initiative leveraging and combining aspects of the NFHS, the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau and the National Sample Surveys that collected data on detailed household-level consumption and expenditure on various food items should be considered.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Way forward<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Decluttering our current approach to reducing the burden of child under nutrition and keeping it simple with a policy goal to providing affordable (economic and physical) access to quality food items, particularly for lower socioeconomic populations groups, should be prioritised.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Context:\u00a0The fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS 2019-20) factsheets on the burden of child under nutrition is not encouraging. How is under nutrition measured? Relied on the measure of a child\u2019s anthropometry: Children are defined as stunted, underweight or wasted if their standardised height-for-age, weight-for-age or weight-for-height is more than two standard&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/nutritional-agenda\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Nutritional agenda<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":73548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,1351,1310,9],"tags":[1291,1573,1461,1396],"class_list":["post-73547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-daily-news","category-daily-news-updates","category-public","tag-hunger","tag-issue_of_malnutrition","tag-nfhs","tag-soc_5","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Nutritional-agenda.jpg?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","views":{"total":39,"cached_at":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}