(1888PressRelease)
March 02, 2007 - New Delhi, 1st March, 2007 - It not merely lack of funds that reduce the impact of welfare or development programmes in different countries, India included. In many instances, it not merely lacks funds that hold back progress but also lack of implementation.
A recent report emanating from United Nations has termed it as a terrible indictment of the world in 2007 that 18,000 children die every day because of hunger and malnutrition and 850 million people go to bed every day with empty stomachs, the head of the UN food agency has said. James Morris called for students and younger people, faith-based groups, the business community and governments to join forces in a global movement to alleviate and eliminate hunger, especially among children. The largest number of malnourished children is in India more than 100 million – followed by nearly 40 million in China.
Elsewhere, there are probably 100 million hungry children in the rest of Asia, another 100 million in Africa where countries have fewer resources to help and 30 million in Latin America, the UN food chief James Morris has said. Poverty in India has a fresh cause-health expenditure. As the poor can no longer afford the prevention-thanks to the price of food and nutrition, they are forced to spend heavily on cure. The vicious cycle is forcing otherwise well off families into impoverishment, World Health Organisation has revealed.
Lack of drinking water, sanitation and clean fuel, which are still not provided to majority of the poor, make them vulnerable to serious health hazards and eventually to higher health expenditure for themselves and their children. It is an alarming situation where the poor are forced to borrow, sell assets and pushed to impoverishment to meet health costs.
The study World Health Survey was conducted by Indian Institute of Population Sciences on behalf of WHO is six states representing each region in the country, reveals that over 16% were pushed below poverty line and 12% had to sell their assets to meet health expenses. A whopping 43.3% poor had to borrow from outside the family to cover health costs.
Look at another facet of healthcare: with fresh cases of polio reported in 16 states in India in 2005-06, the country saw an unprecedented increase of 99% in the number of polio cases. A government report on Intensified Pulse Polio immunization programme reveals that with 666 cases last year.
India earned the second spot internationally, in the highest incidence of polio, after Nigeria.
Of the 17 countries that are still reporting fresh cases of polio, Nigeria had highest number of at 1090. While India was second, the rest of the Indian subcontinent fared better. There was no increase in Nepal and Pakistan showed only a slight rise from 28 cases in 2005 and 39 in 2006.
Afghanistan showed an increase from 9 to 31 cases. Even Somalia fared better than India. According to the report that has compiled statistics from 27 states and union territories in India eight states that had no reported a single case in 2005, saw fresh cases in 2006. These include Assam, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and West Bengal. Uttar Pradesh replaced Bihar as the state reporting maximum number of polio cases.
The biggest problem in the immunization programme being undertaken is that of absenteeism. According to the report, the government officials involved in the programme either report late for the programmes at Pulse Polio centres or do not report at all. In Delhi for instance, the absenteeism has increased steadily over successive drives.
While there are bleak reports from countries like Somalia about children being conscripted for fights among warring factions. India fortunately has some bright, success stories on food and nutrition. Recently a group of media persons were shown a venue in Kurnool Andhra Pradesh where the government's mid-day meal scheme for primary school students has proved a success. In a primary school in the rain deficient district of Andhra Pradesh, children squatted on a pucca floor, waiting for a freshly cooked meal of daal, rice and sambar. For many of these rural children whose parents are hardly able to arrange two square meals a day for them, it is perhaps the only meal of the day. The food is served under the National Programme of Nutritional Support to primary education, which was launched in 1995 and is the largest programme of its kind in the world. The aim of the scheme is to universalize primary education.
According to Somalian government officials, the 70,000 children now conscripted are part of 2,00,000 who have been recruited into the different factions of Somalia's conflict over a 14 year period. Tragic as it is, there is no knowing when the strife would end and the childhood of a whole generation of citizens be free to live.
It will not be out of place to underline that India or the Indian government wants to adopt new WHO norms on child health and nutrition.
The Government is contemplating adopting the new World Health Organisation standards on child growth that can help improve India's poor rating on the global child nourishment index. Indian children have been rated even worse than children in sub-Saharan Africa. Women and Child Development Ministry officials say there is a need to deliberate on switching over from existing standards adopted in the mid-70's, to another classification so that growth monitoring data from Integrated Child Development Scheme is not at variance with the underweight prevalence revealed by other international reports. WHO officials who attended a meeting in India have said the new standards are based on a six month breast-feeding mandate as against the earlier norms of artificial food supplement since child-birth. The 1970 standards were based on a study on American children of English origin and did not reflect the true global picture.
It took WHO 17 years to devise new standards based on simultaneous studies in six countries – including India, Brazil, Ghana, the US and Oman.
Over 300 children breast-fed in rich, educated South Delhi were identified for the study by Society for Applied Sciences statistics complied for three years. WHO officials felt the new standards would reflect the achievements of the ICDS programme even as a survey by Right to Food campaign in six states showed the scheme to be in tatters due to caste discrimination by anganwadi workers.
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