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Powerhouse India lags behind China on nutrition rates

by Nita Bhalla | @nitabhalla | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Wednesday, 16 September 2009 15:04 GMT

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style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US">NEW DELHI (AlertNet) -

India's rapid economic growth has failed to cut alarmingly high malnutrition

rates, leaving it "two generations" behind China, a leading expert has said.

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style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US"> India is home

to one-third of the world's undernourished children, despite impressive economic progress with real

GDP per capita growing by 3.95 percent annually from 1980 to 2005.

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class=MsoNormal> Lawrence Haddad,

director of the London-based Institute of Development Studies, told Reuters in

an interview that India would not meet U.N. 2015 targets on improving nutrition.

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class=MsoNormal> "We expect economic

growth and improved nutrition to go hand-in-hand but at the current rate India

will not reach the Millennium Development Goal -- to reduce the number of people

suffering from hunger by 20 percent by 2015, by 2043," he said.

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class=MsoNormal> All 192 U.N. member states have agreed to meet a string

of developmental goals known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, including reducing

malnutrition, poverty, child mortality and fighting epidemics like HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria.

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class=MsoNormal> Haddad said China --

which had started off with malnutrition rates of around 30 percent in the 1990s

-- had already met the nutrition goals by cutting rates to about 15 percent,

mainly through a more focused and innovative approach.

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As

a result, he said, China was "two generations ahead of India", which was expected

to meet this target in 34 years time.

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"By failing to reach this target, the Indian government is in danger of condemning

a further generation to brain damage, poorer education and early death that result from

malnutrition," he told Reuters AlertNet in an interview.

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Haddad said China's economic growth had

been more broad-based than India's, and as a result, the rewards of such growth

had shown an improvement in many socio-economic indicators.

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class=MsoNormal> China also had a more

focused approach to nutrition, more private sector involvement in interventions

and provided more accountability to communities on services related to

nutrition.

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class=MsoNormal> India is home to more

than 230 million undernourished people, with around 46 percent of children

suffering from malnourishment.

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class=MsoNormal> Experts say around 3,000 Indian infants die

every day from causes related to malnutrition such as weak immune systems.

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