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Alarming level of severe acute malnutrition in Indian districts
Over the last two decades, severe acute malnutrition (SAM) has been increasing in India despite favourable national-level economic growth. The latest round of the National Family Health Survey 5 (NFHS-5) results was released, allowing us to assess changes in the malnutrition trends. Analysis of the...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BMJ Publishing Group
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9024259/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35450860 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-007798 |
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author | Ulahannan, Sabu Kochupurackal Wilson, Alby Chhetri, Deepshikha Soman, Biju Prashanth, NS |
author_facet | Ulahannan, Sabu Kochupurackal Wilson, Alby Chhetri, Deepshikha Soman, Biju Prashanth, NS |
author_sort | Ulahannan, Sabu Kochupurackal |
collection | PubMed |
description | Over the last two decades, severe acute malnutrition (SAM) has been increasing in India despite favourable national-level economic growth. The latest round of the National Family Health Survey 5 (NFHS-5) results was released, allowing us to assess changes in the malnutrition trends. Analysis of the previous rounds of the NFHS (NFHS-4) has already shown disturbing levels of wasting, often co-occurring with other forms of anthropometric failures. These have been shown to occur in clusters of districts across India that already needed urgent policy and programmatic action. A rapid assessment of data from NFHS-5 for some of these districts for which data are now available shows an alarming increase in SAM in several malnutrition hotspot districts. Surprisingly, some districts outside hotspots and in states and regions that have previously not been known for high malnutrition too have shown increasing SAM prevalence in the latest round. The data from NFHS-5 was collected just before the COVID-19 pandemic and hence does not yet reflect the likely impact of the pandemic on food security, livelihoods and other social stressors among the most marginalised Indian households. Based on this emerging pattern of increasing SAM, we call for an urgent policy and programmatic action to strengthen the Anganwadi system, which caters to preschool children in India and community-based management of acute malnutrition based on recent evidence on their effectiveness. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9024259 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-90242592022-05-06 Alarming level of severe acute malnutrition in Indian districts Ulahannan, Sabu Kochupurackal Wilson, Alby Chhetri, Deepshikha Soman, Biju Prashanth, NS BMJ Glob Health Analysis Over the last two decades, severe acute malnutrition (SAM) has been increasing in India despite favourable national-level economic growth. The latest round of the National Family Health Survey 5 (NFHS-5) results was released, allowing us to assess changes in the malnutrition trends. Analysis of the previous rounds of the NFHS (NFHS-4) has already shown disturbing levels of wasting, often co-occurring with other forms of anthropometric failures. These have been shown to occur in clusters of districts across India that already needed urgent policy and programmatic action. A rapid assessment of data from NFHS-5 for some of these districts for which data are now available shows an alarming increase in SAM in several malnutrition hotspot districts. Surprisingly, some districts outside hotspots and in states and regions that have previously not been known for high malnutrition too have shown increasing SAM prevalence in the latest round. The data from NFHS-5 was collected just before the COVID-19 pandemic and hence does not yet reflect the likely impact of the pandemic on food security, livelihoods and other social stressors among the most marginalised Indian households. Based on this emerging pattern of increasing SAM, we call for an urgent policy and programmatic action to strengthen the Anganwadi system, which caters to preschool children in India and community-based management of acute malnutrition based on recent evidence on their effectiveness. BMJ Publishing Group 2022-04-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9024259/ /pubmed/35450860 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-007798 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2022. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Analysis Ulahannan, Sabu Kochupurackal Wilson, Alby Chhetri, Deepshikha Soman, Biju Prashanth, NS Alarming level of severe acute malnutrition in Indian districts |
title | Alarming level of severe acute malnutrition in Indian districts |
title_full | Alarming level of severe acute malnutrition in Indian districts |
title_fullStr | Alarming level of severe acute malnutrition in Indian districts |
title_full_unstemmed | Alarming level of severe acute malnutrition in Indian districts |
title_short | Alarming level of severe acute malnutrition in Indian districts |
title_sort | alarming level of severe acute malnutrition in indian districts |
topic | Analysis |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9024259/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35450860 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-007798 |
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