Malnutrition claims 5 lives is 45 days

Mumbai: Five children from the tribal areas of Thane district lost their lives due to malnutrition in the past one and a half months.

Those who died were all below six years of age and belonged to the villages Gomghar, Suryamal, Hattipada, Thakurpada and Jogalwadi.

The deaths come at a time when the government is fighting the rising criticism on the increasing number of farmer suicides in the Vidharba belt.

However, the state officials have ruled out malnutrition as being the cause of these deaths. The health officials reason that other diseases may have caused the untimely deaths.

Having shrugged off any possibility of malnutrition in the region, the health officials seem to have washed their hands off the whole affair.

"They are not malnutrition cases, at least my report says that. They are due to low weight reasons," says State Health Secretary, Dr Vijay Singh.

But what cannot be ignored is the fact that malnutrition has indeed popped up as a 'highly likely' reason for the children dying at an early age.

Child Health Specialist, Dr Preeti Parekh, says, "Malnutrition may cause these diseases and it can be the other way around as well. It's a cycle."

Grade Standard

Grade 2:

Grade 3:

Grade 4:

The ones between 60 to 70 per cent of their weight fall under Grade 2 of malnutrition, those who are 50-60 of their standard weight are placed under the diseased Grade 3 and the ones less than 50 per cent of their standard weight fall under the seriously malnutritioned and fall in the critical category of Grade 4.

However, CNN-IBN was able to track two cases of Grade 3 and Grade 4 of acute malnutrition in a hamlet of Thakurpada in Thane - a finding that contradicts all official claims.

Clearly, the government is on a buck-passing mode and wants to take a safer route than claiming responsibility.

But the one question that the government will have to answer is - how important are the lives of rural children in their political agenda?