India has been found to be a major contributor to World's burden of stunted children. It ranks third after Nigeria and Pakistan.

‘India holds almost a third of the world's burden for stunting because India is believed to be very diverse from state to state, explains the author.’

For the study, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) used district-level aggregate data from the 2015-2016 National and Family Health Survey (NFHS) covering 601,509 households in 604 districts in India to understand the causes of the spatial variation. 




"India holds almost a third (31 percent) of the world's burden for stunting, and because India is so diverse from state to state, it is important to understand how and why stunting prevalence differs. Researchers used mapping and descriptive analyses to understand spatial differences in the distribution of stunting," the report said.
The mapping showed that stunting varies greatly from district to district (12.4 percent to 65.1 percent), with 239 of the 604 districts having stunting levels above 40 percent.
The three countries with the most children who are wasted are almost the same ones - India (25.5 million) and Nigeria (3.4 million) but also Indonesia (3.3 million), the report suggested.
Using regression decomposition models, the study compared districts with low (less than 20 percent) versus high (more than 40 percent) burdens of stunting and explained over 70 percent of the difference between high and low-stunting districts.
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Children's diets (9 percent), assets (7 percent), open defecation (7 percent) and household size (5 percent) were also important factors.
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"The figures call for immediate action. Malnutrition is responsible for more ill-health than any other cause. The health consequences of overweight and obesity contribute to an estimated four million deaths, while undernutrition explains around 45 percent of deaths among children under five," said Corinna Hawkes, co-chair of the Report and Director of the Centre for Food Policy.
Source-IANS