Abstract :
Introduction: People are at the core of sustainable development. Individual wellbeing is essential to sustaining the inter-generational gains in health, productivity and social engagement that underpin the sustainable development agenda. Recently, India stands with a population of 1.37 billion population in which Gujarat has population of 6.27 crores. (World Population Review 2019)11. Globally, one in three children under the age of 5 is stunted, wasted or overweight and, in some cases suffers from a combination of two of these forms of malnutrition. India comprises almost 13.1 per cent of child population aged 0-6 years. Manifestations of malnutrition emerge not only from food insecurity but also from poor child care and awareness towards it. The present paper is an attempt to review the status of IYCN practices and child’s malnutrition status in Gujarat.
Materials and Methods: Using available NFHS data sheets and other comparable data sets, an attempt is made to understand the magnitude of undernutrition in children below 5 years. The paper is based on the secondary data from various published reports of the government of India.
Main findings: Recently conducted NFHS - 4 provides data on children feeding practice and their Nutritional status. India accounted almost 43 per cent of children underweight against 47 percent in Gujarat. Over the years, feeding Practice like early initiation of breastfeeding within one hr of birth, exclusive breastfeeding and introducing complementary feeding with adequate diet was found to be better in Gujarat State as compared to India. Malnutrition among the children reduced significantly over the time, but still the number of undernourished children is very high in the state.
Conclusion: There is a declining trend in nutritional status of undernutrition in children and improvement in IYCN practices in Gujarat, the concerns still remain for its pace as we need to achieve new targets of Rashtriya Poshan Abhiyan by 2022. The paper reinforces the need for state specific effective delivery and utilization of major government programmes and community participation to achieve targets of Rshtriya Poshan Abhiyan and SDGs at large.
Keyword :
Undernutrition, Feeding practices Child health, Rastriya Poshan Abhiyan, SDGs