Rural children breastfed more: Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey

According to the first-ever national nutrition survey conducted by the government, breastfeeding is inversely proportional to household wealth and other factors.

Due to these reasons, rural children receive meals more frequently in a day at 44% as compared to 37% of urban children.

Key details:

• The Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey released by the government indicates that 83% of children between 12 and 15 months continued to be breastfed, a higher proportion of children in this age group residing in rural areas are breastfed (85%) compared to children in urban areas (76%).
• The higher proportion of children residing in urban areas (26.9%) are fed an adequately diverse diet as compared to those in rural areas (19%).
• Children and adolescents residing in urban areas also have a higher (40.6%) prevalence of iron deficiency compared to their rural counterparts (29%), which experts say is due to a better performance of the government?s health programmes in rural areas.
• Wealthier households and the sedentary lifestyle of children are also responsible for the higher level of vitamin D deficiency in urban areas as compared to rural areas.

What is malnutrition?

• Malnutrition refers to deficiencies, excesses or imbalances in a person?s intake of energy or nutrients.
• The term malnutrition covers 2 broad groups of conditions. One is ?undernutrition??which includes stunting (low height for age), wasting (low weight for height), underweight (low weight for age) and micronutrient deficiencies or insufficiencies (a lack of essential vitamins and minerals). And other is obesity.

Poshan Abhiyaan( National Nutrition Mission):

This mission was launched by Prime Minister in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan in 2018. It targets to reduce the level of under-nutrition and other related problems by ensuring the convergence of various nutrition-related schemes. The Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) is implementing POSHAN Abhiyaan. POSHAN Abhiyaan targets to reduce stunting, under-nutrition, anaemia (among young children, women and adolescent girls) and reduce low birth weight by 2%, 2%, 3% and 2% per annum respectively.