* Bhopal tops in deaths of children of 0-6 years age group
* One in five is Malnourished
BHOPAL: Around 18 percent of the children in the state are malnourished and more than 9,000 could not survive till their seventh birthday in just three months.
MLA Ramniwas Rawat informed Free Press that in the state around 12,62,071 children are in the low weight category and around 1.20 lakh children are severely malnourished. “Nearly 18 percent of the children are malnourished”, he alleged.
The highest number of acutely malnourished children is in the Dhar district, followed by Khargone, Satna and Shivpuri.
The state and the union governments are running several programmes for the welfare of children but they do not seem to have had any impact at the ground level.
From July to October this year, 9785 children i.e. 80 per day died in the state before turning seven.
Pneumonia, diarrhea, fever, measles and mysterious ‘unknown reasons’ were cited as responsible for these deaths.
As many as 640 children died due to pneumonia, 100 due to diarrhea, 488 due to fever, six due to measles. Interestingly, the health department does not know the reasons for the deaths of the remaining 8551 children. He claimed that these children had died due to malnourishment but the government did not want to accept this.
The highest number of deaths has occurred in Bhopal district followed by Sheopur Barwani, Betul and Chhinndwara.
He said that many deaths might have gone unreported because of the lackadaisical manner of functioning of the department of woman and child welfare.
