There are over 14 lakh severely malnourished children in the country as per the government's Poshan Tracker, the Women and Child Development Ministry said on Wednesday.
Children who are severely malnourished have very low weight for their height, and are nine times more likely to die in case of diseases due to their weakened immune system.
Responding to a question in Rajya Sabha, Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani said under Poshan Tracker, the ICT application for monitoring service delivery under Mission Poshan 2.0, out of approximately 5.6 crore children measured in the month of February 2023, the percentage of severely malnourished children is 2.6 per cent. The number comes to be 14,56,000.
The percentage of malnourished children was found to be 7.7 per cent which comes to around 43 lakh, the ministry said.