01 abril 2015

Study Says Pregnant Women in India Are Gravely Underweight NEW...





Study Says Pregnant Women in India Are Gravely Underweight


NEW DELHI — Her first child survived eight months before succumbing to pneumonia; her second was stillborn; her third, delivered in a rickshaw, gasped for an hour before dying.


When she got pregnant for a fourth time, Juhi, a woman from a South Delhi slum who uses only one name, was spotted by a local health worker and taken to a mobile clinic. A doctor diagnosed severe anemia, gave her iron pills and begged her to eat more.


Juhi listened, and gave birth to a boy, Muhammad Sultan, who has survived his first birthday — a huge milestone in a country with about one-sixth of the world’s population but one-third of all newborn deaths.


“My in-laws were telling me they would get my husband married to someone else, because I couldn’t have a healthy baby,” Juhi, 26, said in an interview. “That’s why we left our village. But now my mother-in-law is happy with me.”


The poor health of children in India, even after decades of robust economic growth, is one of the world’s most perplexing public health issues.


A child raised in India is far more likely to be malnourished than one from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe or Somalia, the world’s poorest countries. Poor sanitation and a growing tide of drug-resistant infections also affect nutrition.


But an important factor is the relatively poor health of young Indian women. More than 90 percent of adolescent Indian girls are anemic, a crucial measure of poor nutrition. And while researchers have long known that Indian mothers tend to be less healthy than their African counterparts, a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesdemonstrates that the disparity is far worse than previously believed.


(More from The New York Times)


Related post





Nenhum comentário:

Postar um comentário

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
eXTReMe Tracker
Designed ByBlogger Templates