Around 1,500 children are dying every year in Malkangiri district due to negligence and indifferent attitude of the State Government and corrupt practices of bureaucrats, alleged noted RTI activist Pradeep Pradhan on Thursday.
He said the information obtained under the RTI in 2012 revealed that around 7,000 children had died from 2007-08 to 2011-12, and on an average, around 1500 children die every year as per the Government report, he said.
He too stated that many cases of death are not reported and ignored by the Government to lower down the figure.
In 2012, due to spread of Japanese Encephalitis, 38 children died in 14 villages in the district between September 1 and December 5. A fact-finding team of the Right to Food Campaign had conducted a study about the reasons of deaths of the children. It had been found that though spread of JE is one of the factors, major reasons are malnutrition and hunger.
All these are happening due to large scale failure of food security programmes like MDM, ICDS and PDS and large-scale corruption and misappropriation of funds by officers.
Diseases like epilepsy, ATI, lBW, diarrhoea, asthma, fits, burning, UND, septicemia, birth asphyxia, fever-related ailments and boll cancer also kills children in the district.
Due to malnutrition and chronic hunger, children lost their immune capacity and succumbed to death, Pradhan said in a statement.
He stated that though the report was submitted to the Government with a lot of recommendations to address the problem, the same remains still unheeded.