Abstract

The Global Nutrition Report 2020 (GNR 2020) reported India as one of the 88 countries to miss global nutrition targets by 2025. The report also cited India as a country with presence of wide range of nutritional inequalities at domestic level. 37.9% of under-5 children are stunted and 20.8% are wasted in India. According to the GNR 2020, one in two women of reproductive age suffers from nutritional anemia. Between the years 2000 to 2016, rates of underweight among children have decreased from 66.0% to 58.1% for boys and 54.2% to 50.1% in girls. Despite the reduction, the values are still higher than Asia’s average of 35.6% for the boys and 31.8% for the girls. Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 stated child and maternal malnutrition as leading level 2 risk factor for attributable Disability- Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) across glove. Poor nutrition in the first 1000 days of a child’s life leads to stunted growth, poor cognitive development, and reduced work performance at a later stage. Maternal malnutrition is directly associated with death during childbirth, severe nutritional anemia, and poor pregnancy outcome in Indian women. Multiple community nutrition programmes are adopted and implemented by the Govt. of India to curb maternal and child malnutrition. But, the outcome of these projects vary as the extent and nature of maternal and child malnutrition in India largely depends on geographic position, age, gender, ethnicity, literacy and socio-economic status. This perspective discusses the problem statement of child and maternal malnutrition that prevailed in India followed by providing insight on various efforts taken by the current Government of the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh in mitigating maternal and child malnutrition by designing comprehensive programmes that target health, nutrition, and education. The current administration of Andhra Pradesh incepted many unique measures like YSR Amrutha Hastham, YSR Sampoorna Poshan, Nadu Nedu, Amma Vodi, etc. to ensure spot feeding, access to optimum nutrition by the socially and geographically backward classes, enhanced school attendance, financial assistance to the women, etc. The schemes aim to achieve an overall reduction in social and nutritional inequality among mothers and children in the state.

Keywords: Public Health Nutrition; Community Nutrition; Nutrition Policy; Nutrition Supplementation; Andhra Pradesh; Child Malnutrition; Maternal Malnutrition; Nutritional Anemia; Education

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