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Child malnutrition: Covid impact

THE 10 WORST-HIT STATES
Underweight (low weight to age)
Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh,
Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan,
Assam, West Bengal & Gujarat

Wasted (low weight to height)
Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh,
Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan,
Assam, West Bengal & Gujarat
Singh: emotional support importance

15 million additional
90% of the additional
reconnect with teachers and learning. 77 million children are children can be pushed into malnourished children would
already malnourished in
It will take decades to make up for the India. This is equivalent to malnutrition if children in the be in the 10 worst-hit states.
learning loss of the pandemic era,” the combined population of poorest 20 percent population Bihar to experience maximum
says Dr. Arunabh Singh, director Jharkhand, Telangana and lose 5 percent of their body increase
weight
of the CBSE-affiliated Nehru World Kerala
School, Ghaziabad. Source: Journal of Global Health Science
Moreover it is — or should be —
a sobering consideration that the sive in pre-pandemic India. According children can have major implications,”
learning loss of youngest children at to Child Rights & You (CRY) — the says the report. (see graphic above)
the start of the education continuum well-reputed Delhi-based voluntary Despite these warnings, the Central
is likely to be worse (see cover story organisation — contemporary India and state governments have failed to
p.36). hosts the largest number of malnour- devise effective take-home dry ra-
ished children of any country world- tions and mid-day meal delivery pro-
Health & nutrition wide — 97 million with 38.7 percent grammes to ensure continuation of
ndia runs the world’s largest free of children under five years of age nutrition services to underprivileged
mid-day meals programme for 120 stunted, 19.8 percent wasted (under- children during the pandemic.
Imillion children enrolled in 1.2 weight and short) and 42.4 percent Moreover, they are dilly-dallying
million government schools. In addi- underweight. on the issue of reopening of AWCs,
tion under the Central government’s The pandemic lockdown and clo- private pre-primaries and primary
Integrated Child Development Ser- sure of schools is expected to worsen schools. The auguries are that the
vices (ICDS) programme, 80 million child malnutrition countrywide. A impact of large-scale malnutrition on
children from low-income households recent research paper Living on the children’s mental well-being, cognitive
enrolled in the country’s 1.37 million Edge? Sensitivity of Child Under- development and future earnings will
anganwadi centres (AWCs) are pro- nutrition Prevalence to Bodyweight be very heavy for the Indian economy.
vided free-of-charge cooked mid-day Shocks in the Context of the 2020
meals daily. With these mid-day meal National Lockdown Strategy in In- Economic loss
programmes suspended for more dia, published by Journal of Global he World Bank estimates
than ten months during the pandem- Health Science (July 2020), predicts that the prolonged closure of
ic, child malnutrition has scaled new that in a scenario of 5 percent weight Tschools due to the Covid-19
heights. The India Child Well-being loss, India will experience an alarming pandemic in India may cause a loss of
Report 2020, published on November addition of 4.4 million underweight over $400 billion (Rs.29 lakh crore)
24 by World Vision India, a Chennai- and 3.2 million severely underweight to the economy by way of future earn-
based NGO, says the pandemic has children (a “conservative estimate”). ings. Even as the pandemic is expected
put 115 million children at risk of se- “A high concentration of children in to substantially reduce the future in-
vere malnutrition. the country is already around the un- comes of an entire generation of stu-
This report is alarming because der-nutrition threshold, and any mi- dents, its impact on the finances of the
child malnutrition was already perva- nor shock to nutritional health of the country’s 450,000 private schools is

FEBRUARY 2021 EDUCATIONWORLD 57