Govt must take proactive steps to tackle malnutrition: Experts

Expressing concern over prevalence of malnutrition and hunger in the country, a conference today asked the government to take proactive steps to address the problem that claims lives of thousands of children every year.
Experts, while speaking at the event of General Nutrition Campaign in India titled "Acute Malnutrition-An Everyday Emergency," said that children under five years mostly belonging to tribals, dalits, OBCs and rural communities are most affected by acute malnutrition in the country where one million die every year due to the problem.
Vandana Krishna, Director General of Maharashtra's successful Rajmata Jijau Mother - Child Health and Nutrition Mission, said that the state is making progress in reducing malnourishment among kids through a multi-sectoral action plan but the problem still prevails in the tribal areas.

Rajiv Tandon, Deputy Country Director, ACF-India, appealed the government to take up the issue on a 'mission mode' to save lives of millions of children.
He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi can give a new direction in this regard.
Meanwhile, a report quoting several previous studies said that the number of children affected in India is higher than all the South Asian countries with high burden of wasting or acute malnutrition.

"Within India, Scheduled Tribes (28 per cent), Scheduled Castes (21 per cent) and other backward castes (20 per cent) and rural communities (21 per cent) have a high burden of acute malnutrition," the report read quoting a data.

Noting that in India, treatment coverage of acute malnutrition has been very low, the conference suggested that the treatment coverage of the problem needs to be scaled up the most in the country.
Addressing the participants, Minister of State for Rural Development Sudarshan Bhagat spoke about the steps taken by the government to address the problem and said that he would convey the message of the conference before the highest level.