India has 6.7 million children are going without food: study
This claim has been countered by Sanjeev Sanyal and Aakanksha Arora, Member and Joint Director, respectively, of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister
A new study has emerged which has claimed that a staggering 6.7 million children are going without food in a day. Such malnourished children who have not eaten anything in 24 hours and are between 6 and 23 months are called as ‘zero-food’ children. According to the researchers, the prevalence of ‘zero-food’ children in India is comparable to the prevalence rates in the West African countries such as Guinea, Beni, Liberia and Mali.
However, this claim by the researchers has been countered by Sanjeev Sanyal and Aakanksha Arora, Member and Joint Director, respectively, of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister.
The study says that many children in low and middle-income countries face challenges with accessing the necessary nutrients due to multiple socioeconomic and environmental factors as a result of which undernutrient deficiencies and undernutrition are still a global problem.
A Harvard study, published last month in the JAMA Network Open, a peer-reviewed journal, found that the prevalence of “zero-food children” is as high as 21% in some countries. India had by far the largest number of zero-food children (6.7 million), which is almost half of all zero-food children in the 92 countries included in this study. Nigeria had the second-highest number of zero-food children (962,000), followed by Pakistan (849,000), Ethiopia (772,000), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (362,000).
The study was undertaken by S.V. Subramanian, professor of population health and geography, and Rockli Kim, visiting scientist at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, who analysed 276,379 children from 92 low and middle-income countries, aged 6 to 23 months.
To find out the number of zero-food children around the world, the researchers used nationally representative data collected between 2010 and 2022 across 92 low and middle-income countries. The study found that zero-food children made up 10.4% of the study population. The prevalence of zero-food children ranged widely between countries, for example, in Costa Rica, the prevalence was 0.1% whereas in Guinea it was 21.8%. In this study, India’s zero-food children prevalence was found at 19.3%.
According to the authors, “The prevalence of zero-food children underscores the need for targeted interventions to improve infant and young child feeding practices and ensure optimal nutrition during this critical period of development. The issue is particularly urgent in West and Central Africa and India.”
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