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COVID-19: Two-month lockdown may increase underweight children
Updated On: 02 September, 2020 09:35 AM IST | New Delhi | IANS
A 0.5 per cent weight loss in these children, belonging to the poorest 20 per cent of households in Rajasthan will add about 20,849 and 144,460 cases of underweight and severely underweight children, respectively
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Noting that the two-month-long lockdown may increase the number of underweight children by millions, the Indian Institute of Health Management Research (IIHMR) University, has called for modified parameters that focus on borderline children for better identification of at-risk groups and calibrate policy implementation accordingly. A 0.5 per cent weight loss in these children, belonging to the poorest 20 per cent of households in Rajasthan will add about 20,849 and 144,460 cases of underweight and severely underweight children, respectively, to the country's existing burden, said a recent study titled ‘Living on the Edge'. The findings of the study, led by Dr Sunil Rajpal, Asst Professor, Health Economics, IIHMR University, was published, along with co-authors, in the Journal of Global Health Science.
"Precision targeting is one of the fundamental requirements of any development policy or programme. However, the success of such interventions depends on how precisely the policy can identify the target, i.e. at-risk population. States like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are at risk of experiencing a relatively much larger increase due to a higher population base along with mass in-migration. Therefore, it is imperative to escalate the efforts for restoring the ground-level nutrition interventions," said Dr Rajpal.
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