Abrupt diversion of Aanganwadi Workers (AWWs) towards Covid-19-related tasks has disrupted their usual activities of providing food supplementation under ICDS which is likely to increase the number of underweight kids by millions, researchers have said.
They have called for modified parameters that focus on borderline children for better identification of at-risk groups and calibrate policy implementation accordingly.
Researchers from Indian Institute of Health Management Research (IIHMR) University noted that a 0.5 per cent weight loss in these children, belonging to the poorest 20 per cent of households in Rajasthan will add about 20,849 and 144,460 cases of underweight and severely underweight children, respectively, to the country’s existing burden.
Led by Dr Sunil Rajpal, Asst Professor, Health Economics, IIHMR University, the study titled ‘Living on the Edge’, has been published in the Journal of ‘Global Health Science’.
“Precision targeting is one of the fundamental requirements of any development policy or programme. However, the success of such interventions depends on how precisely the policy can identify the target, i.e. at-risk population. States like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are at risk of experiencing a relatively much larger increase due to a higher population base along with mass in-migration. Therefore, it is imperative to escalate the efforts for restoring the ground-level nutrition interventions,” said Dr Rajpal.
“People belonging to the poorest section of society are mostly employed in the unorganised sector. They have been pushed to the brink due to a lack of access to the right food and widespread job loss. This makes ensuring food supply to these people an imperative. Failing to provide them, especially children, the requisite nutrition will have long-term health and economic consequences for India,” said Dr P.R. Sodani, Pro President, IIHMR University.
According to Government data, as many as 115 million children between the ages of 6 and 14 are dependent on school lunches for their daily dietary requirements, which aimed to address India’s chronic malnutrition problem.