A survey in Maharashtra villages links malnutrition to lack of sustainable livelihood Over 40 children below five years of age died of malnutrition and related complications in Nandurbar
Five-year plan to also ensure safe water and sanitation, besides child protection
Setting new goals: Minister of State for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury with Representative of UNICEF Karin Hulshof during the launch of the GoI-UNICEF programme of co-operation 2008-2012 in New Delhi on Thursday.
NEW DELHI: India and the United Nations Children's Fund on Thursday launched a five year action plan to help India achieve its national development goals.
The government of India and the Unicef today launched a five-year (2008-2012) action plan to help India combat the challenges of excessive malnutrition, high infant and maternal mortality rates, lack of quality education, safe water and sanitation. With seven years to go for the realisation of millennium development goals (MDGs), India is way off in terms of eradicating extreme hunger and poverty with 34.3 per cent of its people still live on less than one dollar a day.
The four-month-old baby was crying at the top of his voice while the mother was cursing her fate sitting beside the baby for her failure to buy tinned milk being a wife of a rickshawpuller at Kamrangeer Char area of the city.
Failing to provide tinned milk, she was giving the baby rice powder mixing with water. The baby was also receiving breast milk.
This article utilises the National Family Health Survey-3 data and presents an empirical assessment of income-related health inequality in India. It undertakes a state-level analysis of inequities in child health by employing the widely accepted measures of concentration curves and concentration indices. It finds that the poorer sections of the population are beleaguered with ill health whether in the quest for child survival or due to anxieties pertaining to child nutrition.
Several hundred head of camel, sheep and cattle shoved and bustled in the blistering afternoon heat to get closer to the well. Many of them were crying and braying from thirst. Nearby, also waiting their turn, half a dozen Touareg nomads sat on donkeys carrying empty yellow water containers. Some had traveled a day or more just to get to this well.
Some 330 babies of less than one month of age die in the country everyday while eight million or 48 per cent of the children below five years are underweight. This is the state of child survival in Bangladesh as revealed in a global report launched by UNICEF, which still says Bangladesh is on track to attain the target-4 of the UN Millennium Development Goals for reducing under-five mortality rate to 50 per thousand by 2015 from current rate of 65.
In the last few months there have been more than a few instances of sparring between the different state governments and the central government. So, if the Jaipur blasts became a bone of political contention about crucial intelligence reports, West Bengal becomes an election battleground where the allies at the Centre took pot shots at each other over the bungling of land acquisition for industrial purposes.
