Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
Sadly, Looking at your posts and threads started by you regarding India..You should be saying Gladly, all are true facts about India......... :-)
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
Spotlight on India’s malnourished children
One and a half year old Barsa cries incessantly. Thrashing her frail limbs around in agony, she appears upset at all the attention she’s getting.
Mother Rukma says she has little time to feed her daughter. Her mother Rukma, no more than a child herself, unsuccessfully tries to soothe her.
Barsa is severely malnourished. Doctors say her condition demands urgent medical attention. She’s been brought to a Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre in Shivpuri in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, where health authorities are working hard to improve her condition. Her emaciated arms and legs are no thicker than my thumb and under her stretched skin, her ribs are clearly visible. Health officials say she’s been on a saline drip for two days now. Her mother says her condition has improved a lot in the four days since she’s been here. In her family of 14 everyone has to work in the field to earn their bread. And feeding the infant is obviously not a priority here. “We have a small land-holding, but that’s not enough to feed everyone. So I work from the morning till late evening as a farm labourer. I feed her when I get the time. But where is the time?” Rukma asks.
‘Marginalised’
Barsa is among millions of children in India who are underweight. A report by the UN’s children’s agency, Unicef, on child nutrition found that out of 146 million children under the age of five who are underweight in the developing world, 57 million are in India, giving it by far the biggest share of the problem.
Doctors say every year almost eight million babies in India are born weighing less than 2,500gm (5.125 lbs) and that millions of underweight babies die in the country annually. The dubious distinction of having the largest number of malnourished children in India goes to the state of Madhya Pradesh.
In the tribal district of Shivpuri alone, more than 4,500 children suffer from acute malnourishment. Unicef officials say close to 1,000 have been classified into Grade 4 - which means they are critical. Crippling poverty and illiteracy have joined hands in this backward region and children are falling prey to malnutrition like nine-pins. Local official Manohar Agnani admits the situation is grim. “Almost 50% of the zero to six-year population here is malnourished. People have few concepts about breast-feeding or weaning,” he says.
Mr Agnani says the problem is not confined to his state, “but definitely the more remote you are, the more marginalised you are, you’ll have less access to information, less access to supplies,” he says. To deal with the problem, the Madhya Pradesh government has set up detection and nutrition rehabilitation centres across the state, supported by Unicef. At one such centre in Chandarpur village, dozens of children below the age of five are being checked. Screaming babies are hung in a cloth sling and weighed on a scale. They are graded according to their age and weight. The ones seriously underweight are recommended to the rehabilitation centres.
Lack of awareness
At the rehab centre in Shivpuri town, the dormitory is teeming with babies. Doctor Gupta (right) says there are simple solutions to malnutrition The four-month-old Goswami twins - Prince and Ansh, have arrived here just an hour ago and their mother Jyoti is bewildered. “I had no idea that I wasn’t feeding them properly. Everyone said dilute the milk with water so I mixed them half and half and fed the babies with a bottle.” Jyoti looks on with concern at Ansh who weighs only 1.8kg (4 lbs), the normal weight for his age is 6kg.
Doctor Ram Sarup Gupta is the paediatrician at the rehabilitation centre and it’s his job to nurse Ansh and Barsa back to health. Today alone, his clinic has received 10 underweight babies and Dr Gupta is rushing from bed to bed, checking them, ordering drips for some, prescribing medicines or a special diet for another. “A little bit of awareness on the parent’s part could have prevented these babies from getting so grossly underweight,” he says. “This is preventable by simple measures.” At these centres, the children are kept anywhere from seven to 14 days. And to ensure that there are no relapses once they are discharged, Unicef is also holding training classes for mothers - they are told what to feed their babies, when to feed them and how much to feed them. Unicef officials say that the biggest reason for malnutrition is not a lack of food. They say the main reasons are social - like the low social status of women, early marriage and little gap between birth of children. “We are trying our level best,” says Unicef’s Vandana Agarwal, “but the number of affected children is very high. It will take us five years to deal with the problem.”
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
very sad for the kids.
what is more sad is how much satisfaction and joy their suffering can bring to certain people.
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
Look people, Asia in general and South Asia in particular have always had skinnier kids (and adults). You take out few regions such as Punjab, and a couple more states, and the rest of South Asia is very similar to the dirt poor Bihar.
However Bharat’s pro-USA twists will earn this poverty stricken country many $$$ in the future. This cash will for sure result in improvements in health.
Just see how pro-USA Chinese society is gaining weight and “some other aspects of their physique”. Chinese women have already “gained” significantly. Check out this link on Chinese women.
China faces storm in D-cup
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/25042006/80-132/china-faces-storm-d-cup-bust-sizes-grow.html
Even BBC is carrying the news
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4942152.stm
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
Okay now this does not make sense. I mean why would my daddy call me ‘Dumba’ and ‘moti’ when I was a kid if I was skinnier??? Something was definitely wrong… hmm… 
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
While the report may be statistically true, one has to have a balanced view.India is the 7th largest country in the world with 35 states accountable to the Constitution of India , not the PM or President.Madhya Pradesh, for eg. , before division was as big as Germany.Madhya Pradesh has had successive non performing state governments in comparison to a state such as Tamilnadu where governance is much better.Each state in India is accountable for it's own performance.Nor can a state government be dismissed for non-performance by the President of India, Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam.Only the Supreme Court can enforce binding arbitration on a state.These and others are some of the reasons why processes take long to come to bear in India.
That is why certain areas of India are more prosperous than others.But, overall, India is doing very well.There is a marked improvement in the country in all spheres.Rural India is also slowly heeding the wake-up call.It will take another decade for overall improvement to be visible.I wish the same for all the countries of our region.
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
“Everyone talks about how well India is doing in the IT industry. Imagine how much better it could do, if 65 percent of the richest and 88 percent of the poorest children were not anaemic,”
http://www.rxpgnews.com/medicalnews/healthcare/india/article_3562.shtml
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
"Everyone talks about how well India is doing in the IT industry. Imagine how much better it could do, if 65 percent of the richest and 88 percent of the poorest children were not anaemic,"
yeah....better watch out
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
:)
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
yeah....better watch out
We are hoping that India does better than sub-saharan Africa in tackling malnutrition.
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
India needs to do more. There is too much corruption and there is too much poverty. Although things have improved a lot in the last 10 years, but this is not good enough. I believe India has the potential to be a developed nation.
I think it’s our (peoples) fault. We do not raise our voice; we elect an MP/MLA and then never question him about what he is doing for the region. Most of the middle class does not even exercise their right to vote.
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
India can learn from Africa on tackling malnutrition.
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
WOW!!India has finally been shown the way. Good luck to India in putting the learnings into action
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
Definitely, India should learn from Africa and even from Pakistan. One can learn not only from the success, but from failure too. From success one can learn what to do, and from failure - what not to do.
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
^
If sub-saharan Africa and others are better at tackling malnutrition as the statistics clearly show, then India is the failure, especially as it seems near the bottom of the world in this.
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
Mr silly....success depends on how much of those failures have been eliminated...going by this track record, india has made progress. But still lot has to be done...because of huge population, the numbers are high.
Besides, if you get happiness by proving that India is failure, then be it so.Moreover, every indian over here is not denying that this report is wrong.
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
^
China has an even bigger population, and it has done much, much better in tackling malnutrition and poverty than India, which is doing worse than Africa.
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
infant mortality rate in china-----23.12 deaths/1,000 live births
infant mortality rate in India ---- 54.63 deaths/1,000 live births
infant mortality rate in Pakistan--70.45 deaths/1,000 live births
china is right now much better then india. Look at the facts for pakistan b4 u try and laugh at india.
Source: World Factbook
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
China is a theocracy try implimenting one child policy in India and pakistan and u will know what the mullahs will say to that.:D
Re: Malnutrition: India beats sub-Saharan Africa
Besides most of the data that comes out of China is tampered. I have seen a documentary (China In Red - PBS Frontline) that shows that the producer was not allowed to enter certain area and talk to certain people. The reason the official gave was that it will show China negetively.
This does not happen in India. Infact I do not think it even happens in Pakistan.