A Child with Chronic Severe Malnutrition in a Tribal Village of Maharashtra– A Case Study

Abstract

The first 1000 days of a child’s life are important for his/her long-term physical, mental and emotional development especially from a nutritional perspective. Inadequate nutrition during this phase can have severely negative consequences like impaired intellectual development.1General under-nutrition is more prevalent amongst rural children, scheduled castes and tribes, and amongst children with illiterate mothers. The contributing factors among these children are household food insecurity and intra-household food distribution, poor diets, inadequate preventative and curative health services and insufficient knowledge of care and infant feeding practices.