It is not any specific disease but malnutrition that kills more Indians. A weak body is more inclined to infections and hardly responds to any medicine or treatment.
Malnutrition is considered to be a national priority with many schemes. Still , there are so many debates on whether to give packaged food to address the deficiency of vitamins through such foods or should we go around distributing micro-nutrient powders. This is the most touted economic growth of the country with millions of hunger chronic mouths to be fed. So it is really a challenge for the food industry to the bottom of the market where people are too poor to transform themselves to be your meaningful consumers. They definitely require a major help from the government to buy them food that they hardly can think of.
The government talks about packaged food – but people consume so much less amount of nutritious food.As per a report, 80% rural people and 70% urban people don’t even get 2400 cal per day – of course there is no food scarcity in the country but if you recall the bumper harvest , you get a clear idea.
New vaccines and non-commuicable diseases are the technical fixes that government is eyeing but there is a huge reluctance ensuring people get nutritious food.
WHY IS THERE A SLOW APPROACH TO CUT OFF THIS HAVOC OF MALNUTRITION?
Is it because vaccine manufacturers seek for immunization programmes’ and drug makers to get funds from government to match up the rapidly excelling cost in private healthcare. Government is also running interventions targeting the narrow zone “Poor” who are just 24% of the population and imagine the rest are ignored- “malnourished class”.
Integrated Child Development Scheme and Mid Day Meal Scheme which are the biggest programmes that has be failed to be taken up by the government due t not being funded properly- which could have been of big help to provide nutrition to infants , pregnant mothers and those who are nursing as well.
The incentives paid by government is too less than the minimum wages of the 8.3 lakh Accrediated Health Activist driving the Health National Mission who work on a contractual basis. It is true that government invest maximum on NCD but fail to connect between them and the under nutrition. It is this nutritional deficiency that is the main cause of low birth weight of a new born putting him/her to Type -2 diabetes class. This is a burden that is growing with time and we need to give an alarm to it.
Lakhs of babies are killed under malnutrition accounting to 55% of neonatal deaths below five years. Under aged mothers and poor natel care are the major reasons to premature babies or underweight ones and is still affecting the poor disproportionately. TB has been the real cause for such deaths as well and thus the vaccines to cut TB hardly gets attention.
The transition from preventive to curative healthcare is due to the negligence caused by malnutrition. The health department is now focusing on public health inclusive of living conditions. But we actually need to keep an eye on this aspect of health because if millions remain hungry and underfed prone to all kind of diseases due to weakened body how will the health indices of our Nation grow.
