Kids’ growth in Pune continues to decline in past five years

The central government has found that Pune district has shown negative growth in all the four indicators of child growth including stunting, wasting, severe wasting and underweight since the past five years

Pune: The central government has found that Pune district has shown negative growth in all the four indicators of child growth including stunting, wasting, severe wasting and underweight since the past five years. As of recent data, Pune has reported 32.7% of kids are underweight, 30.7% stunting, 31.4% wasting and 14% severe wasting among those who were tested and reported to have a poor growth rate.

The central government has found that Pune district has shown negative growth in all the four indicators of child growth including stunting, wasting, severe wasting and underweight since the past five years. (HT (PIC FOR REPRESENTATION))

Officials blame it on the rapid urbanisation of the district and the government machinery’s inability to reach out the ever-migrating population of kids who travel to the city along with the workforce.

As per the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data conducted within the past five years between 2015-16 and 2019-20, the district’s health indicators with regards to kids aged less than 5 has gone from bad to worse.

However, the district administration has said that this is possibly because of the rampant urbanisation that the district saw in the last five years. In terms of stunting the difference rose to 8.3% more kids reporting the same, for wasting this went to 8%, severe wasting went to 5% and the number of underweight kids rose by 7.1%. All the four indicators worsened in the past five years and so the administration has taken multiple steps to ensure that the number of health kids goes higher.

Ayush Prasad, chief executive officer, Pune zilla parishad said, “It is true that we have reported a slip which not just includes the rural areas but also the urban areas in the district. The primary reason for this is the urbanisation seen in the district which is why the district saw a surge in migration and we have reported more malnourished kids among the labour workforce like construction labours, sugarcane cutters, factory workers and other migratory workers. We do not find malnourishment among the kids from the tribal belt. The reason for this slip could be the fact that the government machinery lacked in reaching out to this migratory force which we are working up on now.”

Prasad said that the administration has taken several exhaustive steps which have also resulted in decrease in the number of malnourished kids in the district. He said, “We have got all the kids in rural areas checked for malnourishment through doctors a campaign which was launched in February 2020 and we categorised the necessary interventions into three groups like nutritional, medical and surgical. The results are evident now as in the first year, 2020, we saw a drop of malnourishment among kids by 44% which has now gone to 80%. It is also noteworthy that the child and maternal mortality rate in the district has also gone down significantly because of the interventions we have put into place.”