NEW DELHI, Aug 25: India, where more than one third of the world’s malnourished children live, needs to focus not only on reducing Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) but also on ensuring basic minimum diet for them, as the move will help reduce disability among newborns and thereby contributing to national building.
It was stated by Dr Vandana Prasad, Member of National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.
“The country suffers from a huge burden of malnourished children, who should be administered proper diet if they have to contribute in nation building,” she said.
Dr Prasad emphasised on the need for social sector to focus on the need for proper nourishment of infants.
Addressing a conference on “Child Malnutrition: Sharing of Best Practices” here, she said though the government schemes to reduce IMR have met with little success, those very initiatives are accelerating disability among newborn.
“In the process of saving lives of millions of children, we are creating a pool of disabled children. Though, we have been able to save them but in absence of proper diet we will have a huge number of disabled people in the years to come,” Dr Prasad said.
To deal with the problem, experts present at the conference feel there is a clear need to address the problem with two pronged strategy – first reduce infant mortality, second also ensure basic minimum diet for the children.
Responding to the concerns expressed, Dr Sila Deb, Deputy Commissioner (Child Health), Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said there are schemes and solutions available to fight high mortality and morbidity among children, but there is a need to properly implement such schemes.
“The foremost weapon to fight malnourishment among children should be to convince mothers to breastfeed children from the very first hour of birth,” she said.
Dr Deb said severely malnourished children are 8 to 12 times more likely to die as compared to normal malnourished children and there is a clear need to build capacity of healthcare workers or ASHA to fight child morbidity and mortality.
Speaking on the occasion, FICCI Head (CSR) K K Upadhyay said given that every third malnourished child lives in India and that zero to five age bracket constitutes the most vulnerable zone, “corporate houses should incorporate child health in the core agenda of Corporate Social Responsibility”.
The conference was jointly organised by FICCI Aditya Birla CSR Centre for Excellence and Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (UNI)
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