The level of child undernutrition remains unacceptable throughout the world, with 90 per cent of the developing world's chronically undernourished (stunted) children living in Asia and Africa. Detrimental and often undetected until severe, undernutrition undermines the survival, growth and development of children and women, and diminishes the strength and capacity of nations. With persistently high levels of undernutrition in the developing world, vital opportunities to save millions of lives are being lost, and many more millions of children are not growing and developing to their full potential.
Nutrition is a core pillar of human development and concrete, large-scale programming not only can reduce the burden of undernutrition and deprivation in countries but also can advance the progress of nations.
Fast Facts
In India 20 per cent of children under five years of age suffer from wasting due to acute undernutrition. More than one third of the world's children who are wasted live in India.
Forty three per cent of Indian children under five years are underweight and 48 per cent (i.e. 61 million children) are stunted due to chronic undernutrition, India accounts for more than 3 out of every 10 stunted children in the world.
Undernutrition is substantially higher in rural than in urban areas. Short birth intervals are associated with higher levels of undernutrition.
The percentage of children who are severely underweight is almost five times higher among children whose mothers have no education than among children whose mothers have 12 or more years of schooling.
Undernutrition is more common for children of mothers who are undernourished themselves (i.e. body mass index below 18.5) than for children whose mothers are not undernourished India's life expectancy has more than doubled, and infant mortality, halved in the last fifty years. The extent of progress on economic fronts and political scenario has been enormous. India is knocking the door for a permanent position in the United Nations and is one of the few atomic power countries in the world. However, paradoxically, we have the highest number of malnourished people in India and our child malnutrition rate is unacceptably high.
Sangini Foundation in partnership with its partner ecosystem has a be-spoke solution approach to mitigate this predicament: provision of clean-safe water coupled with tools & techniques for crop & nursery management (pulses, fruits & vegetables) and intervention in the mid-day meal school program.
