J&K witnesses worrisome trends in child health determinants

Jammu: The Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed worrisome trends in nutritional outcomes determined on a number of key aspects of health. A detailed report in this regard shows that conditions like anemia, wasting, stunting, underweight, etc have worsened for the Union Territory.
A serious disease like anemia has soared to 73% from 54% among children of J&K under the age of 5 years in the last 5 years, while wasting has also increased from 14% to 19% in the same time period. Another serious health condition, stunting, could be brought down only by 1%, that is, from 28% in 2015-2016 to 27% in 2019-2020.
It may be mentioned here that stunting is when a child has a low height for their age, usually due to malnutrition, repeated infections, and/or poor social stimulation, while wasting has a low weight for their height. And, anemia is a condition in which one lacks enough healthy red blood cells to carry adequate oxygen to the body's tissues.
IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute) led POSHAN (Partnerships and Opportunities to Strengthen and Harmonize Actions for Nutrition in India) conducted this survey using data from National Family Health Survey (NFHS) revealing the health concerns among children in J&K. It is a multi-year initiative, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which aims to support the use of data and evidence in decision-making for nutrition in India.
As per the report, 73% of children under 5 years of age suffer from anemia in the UT, which is a massive 19% increase from 2015-2016. Nearly 21% children here are now underweight, while the number for this health determinant was 19% in 2015-16.
Further, 19% of children are suffering from wasting, up by 5% since 2015-2016, while the number of children suffering from severe wasting has also increased from 7% in 2015-2016 to 10% in 2019-2020.
Despite making rigorous efforts, the number of children suffering from stunting has remained more or less the same in the last 5 years, declining by just 1%. Out of 2.51 lakh stunted children in the whole of J&K, Anantnag district has 27578 stunted children while Jammu district stands at Number 4 with 20718 such children.
While 6.25 lakh children under 5 years of age suffer from anemia in J&k, it is the valley districts which contribute the most to this serious health condition, with Anantnag having almost 70000 such children.
Anantnag district again tops the list of districts when it comes to conditions like wasting and severe wasting, having 24350 and 13691 children suffering from these conditions respectively. A total of 1.83 lakh children across J&K suffer from wasting while approximately 94000 children suffer from even more dangerous, severe wasting.
However, what should concern the health department the most is that almost all the districts of UT are having huge number of children suffering from these health conditions. While all the 20 districts are flagged as having ‘public health concern’ when it comes to anemia and severe wasting, 19 districts earned the unwanted tag in wasting, and 18 in stunting.
As per World Health Organisation guidelines, a district is flagged as the one with ‘public health concern’ if it has more than 20% of children suffering from stunting, 40% from anemia, 10% from wasting and 2% from severe wasting.
The only glimmer of hope comes from reduction in the number of underweight children across the UT. While the survey did not put a specific figure, it has been reliably learnt that children suffering from this condition have been brought down to single digit from 14% in 2015-2016. There are a total of 2.02 lakh underweight children here, with Anantnag again topping the list with 27675 of them.