'Malnutrition needs to be addressed'

With thousands of children in India malnourished, policymakers should look at its seriousness and scale of the problem, a civil society organisation said Thursday.

"It feels shameful that India leads other countries as it has maximum number of malnourished children. While the government is researching on other life threatening diseases, the problem of malnutrition in children remains high," a statement from Centre of Public Policy (CPP) said.

The civil society organisation said if India can eliminate malnutrition in young children, it can boost the Gross National Product (GNP) by up to 11 percent.

"Though number of policies has been introduced for ensuring food security to 1.27 billion population in India, malnutrition deserves far greater attention for providing free meals and maternity benefits to women, lactating mothers, children between the age of six months and 14 years, and homeless people," it said.

A report by UNICEF said the future of approximately 6 million children is at risk, as statistics has revealed that one in three of the world's malnourished children lives in India.