Malnutrition in Women

• An average girl child aged less than 5 years is healthier than her male peers. However, over a period of time they grow into undernourished women in India.
• Malnutrition and anaemia are common among Indian adults.
• A quarter of women of reproductive age in India are undernourished, with a body mass index (BMI) of less than 18.5 kg/m (Source: NFHS 4 2015-16).
• Both malnutrition and anaemia have increased among women since 1998-99.
• 33% of married women and 28% of men are too thin, according to the body mass index (BMI), an indicator derived from height and weight measurements.
• Underweight is most common among the poor, the rural population, adults who have no education and scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
• 2% of women and 24.3% of men suffer from anaemia, and have lower than normal levels of blood haemoglobin.
• Anaemia has increased in ever-married women from 1998-99. Among pregnant women, anaemia has increased from 50% to almost 58%

• Patriarchal mindset: Despite social progress, women largely continue to navigate through systems that are defined by masculinity. Class and caste hierarchies further sharpen the patriarchal grip, making it difficult for women to escape discrimination.
• Early Marriage: Which make them deprived of iron reach diet and also leads to early sex and child bearing.
• low social status: Preference of male child over the girl child affecting the girl health the most.
• Low diet diversity: The diets of women in India are often too poor to meet their nutritional needs. Iron deficient and other micronutrient diet affects the most.
• Poverty: Low income lead to less availability of food to people.
• Low literacy: Low literacy among the mother’s and girl child make them vulnerable to less nutritious diet and physical changes in body.
• Lack of awareness: Lack of awareness among the people about the importance of particular nutrition and vitamins make the situation worst.
• Women’s reproductive biology and lack of access to healthcare & proper medicines: When mothers take only short intervals between pregnancies and have many children, this can exacerbate nutrition deficits, which are then passed on to their children.
• Sociocultural traditions and disparities in household work patterns can also increase women’s chances of being malnourished.

• an undernourished mother inevitably gives birth to an undernourished baby, perpetuating an intergenerational cycle of undernutrition.
• Undernourished girls have a greater likelihood of becoming undernourished mothers who in turn have a greater chance of giving birth to low birth weight babies, perpetuating an intergenerational cycle.
• This cycle can be compounded further in young mothers, especially adolescent girls who begin childbearing before they have grown and developed enough.

• Addressing women’s malnutrition has a range of positive effects because healthy women can fulfil their multiple roles — generating income, ensuring their families’ nutrition, and having healthy children — more effectively and thereby help advance countries’ socioeconomic development.
• Women are often responsible for producing and preparing food for the household, so their knowledge — or lack thereof — about nutrition can affect the health and nutritional status of the entire family.
• Promoting greater gender equality, including increasing women’s control over resources and their ability to make decisions, is crucial.
• Improving women’s nutrition can also help nations achieve three of the Millennium Development Goals, which are commonly accepted as a framework for measuring development progress.

• Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme.
• National Health Mission.
• Mid-Day Meal Scheme.
• Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojna (IGMSY).
• Mother’s Absolute Affection.
• SABLA.
• National Nutrition Mission (POSHAN Abhiyaan) seeks to ensure a “malnutrition free India” by 2022.
• Strengthen MGNREGA to ensure better food security.

• Improving the quantity and nutrient level of food consumed in the household: improving access to generalized household food ration through public distribution system. Also providing access to supplementary foods under the integrated child development services scheme.
• To impart knowledge to improve the local diet, production and household behaviours through nutrition and health education.
• Preventing micronutrient deficiencies and anaemia: This through providing the Iron Folic Acid Supplementation deworming, Pre and peri-conceptual folic acid supplementation, Universal access to iodized salt, Malaria prevention and treatment in malaria-endemic areas, Access to knowledge and support to stop use of tobacco products during pregnancy, Maternal calcium supplementation, Maternal vitamin A supplementation.
• Increasing women’s access to basic nutrition and health services: By providing early registration of pregnancy and quality of antenatal check-up, with emphasis on pregnancy weight gain monitoring, screening and special care of at-risk mothers.
• Improving access to water and sanitation health (WASH) education and facilities: By providing sanitation and hygiene education, including menstrual hygiene.
• Empowering women to prevent pregnancies too early, too often and too close together: By ensuring marriage at/after legal age of 18 through awareness and ensuring a girl completes secondary education. Also preventing maternal depletion by delaying first pregnancy and repeated pregnancies through family planning, reproductive health information, incentives and services.
• Expanding the maternity entitlement: Promoting community support system for women, skill development, economic empowerment as part of maternity entitlement. Providing community support system for women to support decision making, confidence building, skill development and economic empowerment.

Adequate nutrition is important for women not only because it helps them be productive members of society but also because of the direct effect maternal nutrition has on the health and development of the next generation. There is also increasing concern about the possibility that maternal malnutrition may contribute to the growing burden of cardiovascular and other non-communicable diseases of adults in less developed countries. Finally, maternal malnutrition’s toll on maternal and infant survival stands in the way of countries’ work toward key global development goals.