Nagada in Jajpur district is one example of 19 children dying due to malnutrition despite the State Government’s claim to have introduced a lot of programmes to solve the malnutrition problem.
According to the 2011 Census, the State had a little over 50 lakh children in the age group of 0-6 years and, of them, 13.5 lakh were suffering from malnourishment. Out of 100 children in the age group, 28 were undernourished.
The Woman and Child Welfare Department has also conceded to the figure and reported that 11 lakh of the 13.5 lakh children are extremely malnourished by December 2014. According to the report 39.2 per cent of the children were underfed.
While Malkangiri was on the top of the list, Koraput, Nabarangpur, Raygada, Gajapati, Kandhamal, Kalahandi, Nuapada, Mayurbhanj, Sundargarh and Keonjhar followed it. But the malnutrition position of Jajpur was far behind, even below Jagatsinghpur.
While there were 9,021 children undernourished in Malkangiri, 8,836 were malnourished in Koraput and 7,904 were in Mayurbhanj. Jagatsinghpur had 203 and Jajpur 154 only.
If Nagda situation is taken into consideration, the malnutrition problem seems to have been mounted not only in Jajpur but also in all other distrits.
According to a national-level report, malnutrition problem is on the rise in five States now and Odisha tops the list. Other States are Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattishgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
Now the situation is such that the Government has to undertake a longstanding action plan to check malnourishment in each district before it creates a disastrous like situation.