More hospital births, but limited gains in childhood nutrition: National Family Health Survey-5 (The Hindu)

The Hindu published an article on the latest findings from the National Family Health Survey-5 stating that the births in institutional facilities, such as a hospital, improved by nearly eight percentage points but children who were either stunted or displayed signs of wasting only dropped by a maximum of three percentage points, shows a comparison of National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) and NFHS-4. The complete results of the NFHS-5 were made public on Wednesday. The NFHS-4 was released in 2014-15 and the latest, which captured population health indicators in 2017-19, was delayed due to the pandemic. “What is gobsmacking is the increase in those overweight, the very large burden of NCD and the very challenging findings on waist-hip ratio. 56.7% of women and 47.7% of men have a high-risk waist-to-hip ratio. What we are going to see is that many of these are diet-related diseases, especially the quality of people’s diets and what people can afford to eat,” said senior research fellow Purnima Menon.