Mumbai: The wealthiest and most industrialised state in the country is also home to over 85,000 severely malnourished and over 5.5 lakh moderately malnourished children.
To tackle the problem of malnutrition in the urban slum areas of the state, the WCD department plans to set up ‘urban child development centres’ on the lines of ‘village child development centres’, to provide severely malnourished children with nutritious food and proper care.
Officials said they would provide ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF), also called energy-dense nutritious food, a fortified paste of peanuts, oil, sugar, vitamins, milk powder and mineral supplements, for treating severely malnourished children between six months and six years of age.
“Earlier, we allowed the rations to be taken home and hot cooked meals to be served by anganwadis but this has failed to eradicate the problem, so we have now decided to provide these children therapeutic food to save them from acute malnourishment,” said an official.
The non-governmental organisation, Praja Foundation, surveyed civic school health check-ups and the data of paediatric deaths in the city due to malnutrition, which revealed that 17 per cent children in anganwadis across Mumbai were underweight in 2018-19, and 2,713 of them being severely underweight.
The report also highlighted the diseases caused by nutrient deficiencies. Three deaths were recorded due to nutritional marasmus (a type of protein-energy malnutrition) and 29 due to other types of protein-energy malnutrition (other than marasmus and kwashiorkor) in 2017 among children in the age group of 0-19 years.
Last year, 508 children died between April and December 2018 due to malnutrition and there were 153 stillbirths (death or loss of a baby before or during delivery) in the state’s Melghat region.
Idzes Kundan, secretary, WCD, said they would soon submit a proposal to the state government for approval. “We need to tackle the issue of malnutrition, as the cases are increasing are every year and need to be addressed immediately.
Once the proposal gets approved, these centres will be start in the urban slum areas,” she said.
