The State has a total of 36, 76, 153 children below five years’ age and, of them, 5,11,651 are underweight and 26,219 are severely underweight.
Woman and Child Development Minister Prafulla Samal informed this in the State Assembly in response to a question of BJP MlA Dilip Ray on Friday. According to the data, each of 30 districts has both underweight and severely underweight children. While Keonjhar has highest 47,634 underweight children, Sundargarh has highest 2,189 severely underweight children.
Other districts which have more than 30,000 underweight children below five years’ age are Kalahandi (38,337), Ganjam (37,824), Sundargarh (35,066), Nabarangpur (34,584), Mayurbhanj (33,327) and Koraput (33, 056). Jagatsinghpur has the lowest 1,492 underweight children.
Similarly, districts other than Sundargarh which have more than 2,000 severely underweight children are Kalahandi (2,177), Mayurbhanj (2,086) and Nabarangpur (2,077). Boudh district has the lowest 89 severely underweight children, according to data.