While Ministers In Bihar Are Busy Endorsing Nitish Kumar As PM, Children Are Losing The Battle Against Malnutrition

With over 5 million malnourished children under the age of five and 38 nutrition rehabilitation centres (NRCs) to provide assistance, the state of Bihar can treat only 0.3% of those who need medical care. According to a Right to Information request filed by IANS, one NRC centre with ten or twenty beds is located in every district of the state and serves an area of around 100 square kilometers.

A simple computation helps us arrive at the conclusion. With each centre having 10 or 20 beds and assuming that each child is treated for 20 days on an average, each centre ends up treating only 365 children in a year at best. That comes out to be 13, 870 children or 0.3% of the total malnourished.

While the state certainly needs a wider network of NRCs to provide medical assistance, the existing facilities have not been utilized to the best. During the year 2013-14, only 8,539 children were treated at these centres throughout the state, meaning only 66% of the total capacity was utilised. Many of those treated at these centres repulse into malnutrition due to lack of proper care and absence of awareness initiatives.

The sorry state of health infrastructure in the state, coupled with government’s constant failure to promote organised health care, has proved disastrous.

With Inputs From IANS.