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Misconceived Measures for Malnutrition
The recent Government of India recommendation for monthly length/height measurements by anganwadi workers promises to be a disaster in its current form and might lead to a severe derailing of the existing system of data collection and management, leading to further chaos and misreporting on malnutrition.
This article is based on a letter sent by the author to Niti Aayog on the same issue. The author acknowledges the assistance of Shahnawaz Khan, PHRN in supplying and corroborating some factual details included in the article.
The recent National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) data from 22 states and union territories (UTs) of India has raised major concerns with the progress on the reduction of malnutrition in the country and has received extensive attention in the press and media. This has also served, once again, to highlight the important role that the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme plays in the health, nutrition, and well-being of women, children, and adolescents. The programme is widely held as an intervention that appears to be well-functioning and worthy of further investment, but at the same time it is a system that requires far greater coverage, quality, and impact to achieve acceleration in achieved outcomes (Drèze 2020).
ICDS, Malnutrition and Data
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