English Transcript

Cập nhật 02/09/2008 17:10:50

A recent report by the United Nations children's fund UNICEF warns that malnutrition in Asia is now more widespread than in sub-Saharan Africa. One of the worst-affected places in the region is the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, where more than half of all children are malnourished. Despite India's booming economy, the state's rural poverty is getting worse.

Presenter: Alana Rosenbaum
Speakers: Shivshankar Kumar, UNICEF health consultant; Amit Srivastava, paediatrician, UNICEF Sick Newborn Care Unit; local resident in Badagan village, Madhya Pradesh; chief economist at Crisil, Dharmakirti Joshi



ROSENBAUM: Listless toddlers lie beside their mothers on narrowly spaced beds. Some of the children are losing their hair and have limbs too thin to even support their own bodyweight. This is the paediatric malnutrition clinic in Shivpuri, northern Madhya Pradesh, one of India's poorest states. All the children here suffer from acute malnutrition, weighing less than 60 per cent of their ideal weight. One-year-old Roshini clings to her mother Rachna. This is their second stay at the clinic.

RACHNA: When I separated from my husband, he took the baby and didn't feed her properly. That's why she got sick again.

ROSENBAUM: Shivshankar Kumar is a UNICEF health consultant.

KUMAR: Here they learn how to feed their children, every two hours they need something to eat. But when they go back to their home they have to go back to the field. They leave in the morning and they come back in the evening. They can't take small children to the field because they will hamper their work, so what they do is the small children are left with the other siblings at home. And whatever they keep for the children the elder sibling eats. A small child can't ask for food, they will only cry.

ROSENBAUM: UNICEF says child malnutrition in Madhya Pradesh has increased five percent in as many years. Now, a staggering 60 percent of children in the state are malnourished. Over the past fortnight, at least of them five have died. Many blame the vicious cycle of poverty on deteriorating child health; young, malnourished and illiterate mothers are more likely to give birth to weak, low-weight babies. Nearby the malnutrition clinic, UNICEF operates a neo-natal care centre. Here, rows of severely underweight newborns breath with the help of respirators. Amit Srivastava, a paediatrician at the centre, says many babies are brought in with infections from unhygienic conditions.

SRIVASTAVA: People feed the child with milk other than mother's milk. They apply some dirty things on the umbilical cord and sometimes handling of the child is not hygienic.

ROSENBAUM: Shivpuri is one of the poorest regions of Madhya Pradesh. The area is dominated by the Saharia tribe, which has a literacy rate of just 15 per cent. Badagan is a Saharia village about half an hour's drive from the clinic. A large group gathers in the village centre, beside a series of mud brick huts. Some of the children have distended bellies, a tell-tale sign of severe malnutrition.

RESIDENT: I can only afford to eat two meals a day, but I make sure my children eat more than that.

ROSENBAUM: This man says the village hand pump has been broken for year, and people have fallen ill drinking river water. Only a handful of Badagan residents actually own land. Most work as agricultural labourers for high caste Hindus, earning about a dollar a day. This year there's been enough work thanks to a heavy monsoon, which broke a five-year drought in Madhya Pradesh. But only a few villagers have savings, and when work is scarce there's little to eat.

RESIDENT: I work for two days, and then I can afford to go to the market.

ROSENBAUM: Economist Dharmakirti Joshi say a combination of low crop yield, high inflation, and a rise in global food prices has strained India's urban and rural poor this year.

JOSHI: If the country imports food commodities you are exposed to the global fluctuation in food prices. Take an example for instance of edible oils. We import more than 50 per cent of it. So unless the government subsidises it for poor people, the domestic price is going to remain very high, because your import prices have shot up and there is no other way to meet your edible oil requirements.

ROSENBAUM: Joshi says that India's GDP continues to gallop ahead at nine per cent a year. But the new wealth isn't trickling down to the 400 million Indians who still live below the poverty line.