Malnutrition is said to have claimed the lives of 25 children in Rajasthan in the last two-and-half-months. Nearly half of them are from Barmer alone. According to reports, 16 more children in Barmer are in a critical condition.
These deaths have occurred in 13 districts on the high priority list for need of health services. What is also shocking is that the children died during the community-based management of acute malnutrition programme. Under this programme, which was launched on December 21 and ended on February 16, the state government screened 240,000 children in 1,489 villages of 41 blocks in 13 “high focus” districts, and identified over 9,500 children. However, there have been contradictory reports from the government. It is neither confirming nor denying that the children have died from malnutrition.
Health minister Rajendra Rathore said the number of malnutrition deaths was negligible. According to him, nearly 97 per cent children have recovered under the programme, which means he didn’t totally rule out malnutrition deaths.
“During the CMAMP programme, in the last six months, the ratio of death among acutely malnourished children was just 0.25 per cent. In these cases the possibility of deaths is 21 per cent,” he said on Saturday. But about the reports of 25 deaths, he said majority of them were due to other reasons.
On the other hand, managing director of state health mission Navin Jain outright rejected the malnutrition deaths.
Meanwhile, the district collector Sudhir Sharma in Barmer said that prima facie malnutrition is said to be the cause of deaths of these children. But, on the record they have been found to be suffering from other illness as well, but the actual reason would be known only after receiving the medical report. He said an inquiry was ordered.
Between December 20, 2015, and February 15 2016, five children — all girls — in Barmer’s Chouhtan district, four in Balotra and two in Siwana died of severe acute malnutrition. All of them were being treated under the state government’s Community Based Management of Acute Malnourished Children scheme and the blocks were selected for a trial run of the project.
In the official death report, health department officials confirmed all the deaths were sudden and not due to any disease. Chouhtan’s block chief medical officer Dr Shambhu Ram Gadhveer said the five girls were identified as severely malnourished during a survey for the programme and their parents were advised to take them to a bigger health centre but didn’t. One of the girls was taken to Sanchore, Rajasthan’s biggest town that neighbours Gujarat, but she still died, he added.
Dr Mahendra Yadav, in-charge of the primary health centre at Dhanau, confirmed two girls under his PHC died of malnourishment.
