The scourge of malnutrition among children is still haunting the State. Odisha, even in 2014, continued to be in the top five States of the country with a sizeable chunk of child population in the age group of 0-6 years facing acute malnutrition.
According to the data available with the State Women and Child Development Department, malnutrition is being detected in around 28 children in every 100 children weighed. The acute malnutrition condition is being observed in 2 of every 100 children weighed.
The data further puts the total malnourished child population in the State at around 11 lakh, which is fifth largest overall nationally. The details show that Odisha pulls ahead of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh but falls behind Jharkhand in the dubious list topped by Bihar.
It is pertinent to mention that the State has over 50 lakh children in the age-group of 0-6 years as per the 2011 census data. The detection rate of undernourishment puts the total malnourished child population in the State at around 13.5 lakh with the acutely under nutrition affected number at around 92,000. However, the respite for the State is in 2011 it has over half (52 per cent) of its child population affected by malnourishment but last year over 72 per cent children in the State in the said age-group were identified as normal.
Though the overall malnutrition cases detected has shown a decrease of around 2.5 per cent, cases of severely malnourished rate didn’t exhibit the same buoyancy by showing a fall of only 0.86 per cent.
Moreover, the distribution is quite uneven with four Scheduled Tribes dominated districts, Gajapati, Malkangiri, Koraput and Rayagada, reporting the maximum load of malnourished children.
In the given context, the findings of the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau that only one-third tribal children in the age-group of 0-6 years could have access to the recommended dietary allowance thereby getting the right proportion of protein, fibre and carbohydrates brings to fore the acuteness in tribal areas. The scenario is equally grave in the case of scheduled caste population too.
Given the enormity, organisations working for nutritional security argue for strengthening and increasing the Anganwadi network in the State to increase the outreach of Supplementary Nutrition Programme (SNP) to vulnerable social groups. Though the number of anganwadi centres sanctioned for the State is nearly 73,000, the State currently have around 71,300 centres only as the State couldn’t operationalise around 500 centres more targeted during the last financial year , explained activist Ranjan Mohanty.
Incidentally, the coverage under Integrated Child Development Scheme/SNP in the State has shown a dip from around 49 lakh during 2008-09 to 10-11 to around 47 lakh last year. Moreover, the number of mothers benefitted from SNP last year is around 8.1 lakh against the estimated annual pregnant women in the State at over 9.32 lakh. The gap explains the need to intensify the outreach programme, urged experts.
The data, however, suggests an improvement in the nutritional status of children in the State, which is largely due to successful implementation of the SNP under ICDS. Under the SNP, children in the age-group of 6 months to 6 years, pregnant women and lactating mothers were given nutritional support for only 300 days a year. However, the recent slash in budget allocation under ICDS meant for augmenting Anganwadi outreach and infra could throw a spanner in the index of nutritional development, observed experts.