India's nutritional crisis

Friends, here is something on nutritional status..
"The fact sheets of the third round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-III), conducted in 29 States in 2005-2006, indicate that the health and nutrition status of India's women and children is in vast and systemic crisis. At the all-India level, 45.9 per cent of children below the age of three — that is, about 45 million little girls and boys — are underweight or malnourished in terms of the standard weight-for-age criterion. The corresponding proportion in 1998-99 was 46.7 per cent. The change over the intervening seven years in this key indicator of child malnutrition has thus been negligible. Among married women in the 15-49 age group, the prevalence of anaemia has risen from 51.8 per cent in 1998-99 to 56.1 per cent in 2005-06. No less than 57.9 per cent of pregnant women suffer from anaemia, which has also risen among children aged 6 to 36 months — 79 per cent were anaemic in 2005-06 compared with 74.2 per cent in 1998-99. There are of course wide variations across States in both levels and trends in indicators of health and malnutrition. While Punjab and Kerala report the lowest proportion of underweight children (27 per cent and 28.8 per cent respectively), in Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh more than 59 per cent of children below the age of three were underweight. Child malnutrition has actually risen in seven States, most rapidly in Madhya Pradesh and Haryana..."

For more see:
http://www.thehindu.com/2007/03/02/stories/2007030203151000.htm