Today’s children are tomorrow’s future. To invest in a child is to invest in a country’s growth and prosperity for decades to come. And in India, one needs to initiate that by partnering with development organisations for a child’s health.
Despite decades of investments to address India’s growing health crisis, multiple reports and surveys have shown how the country has one of the worst rates of child nourishment globally with more than half of the country’s children under the age of four being reported to be underweight and stunted.
What does the data suggest?
By far, India has the largest number of infants, aged between 6 to 23 months, who have not been fed in the past 24 hours. A recent Harvard study, published earlier this year, terms this phenomenon as ‘zero-food’ children where they do not consume milk, any formula or food for an entire day.
According to the study, India has an estimated 6.7 million ‘zero-food’ children which accounts for half the population of ‘zero-food’ children across 91 other countries included in the survey.
As of October 2021, it was estimated that over 33 lakh children in India remained malnourished and more than half of them fall in the severely malnourished category. Further, with the Covid pandemic exacerbating the health and nutrition crisis among the underserved strata of society, the Women and Child Development Ministry estimated that there are 17.76 lakh severely acute malnourished children and 15.46 lakh other children being moderately acute malnourished.
UNICEF in 2022 said that India has the highest number of children suffering from acute malnutrition. In its May 2022 child alert, the global body had called the situation an ‘overlooked child survival emergency’ with the situation in the South Asian country being worse than that of sub-Saharan Africa.
How are CSR partnerships/donations and healthy children related?
India’s overall health expenditure has always been towards a moderately lower limit drawing heavy criticism from health experts and activists. A recent Lancet report says that the country’s healthcare expenditure lies at 1.2% of the GDP as against a planned vision of 2.5% by 2025.
While the overall appropriations for the Union budget 2021–22 increased by 14.5%, however, the portion devoted to child nutrition decreased by 18.5% from 2020–21 to 2021–2022.
Budgetary allocation cuts like these severely compound an already flailing health crisis, distinctly affecting the children, there has to be a need to move beyond government funding and encourage third-party resources to ensure that every child has access to the right nutrition. While several not-for-profit organisations, large-scale enterprises, social firms, health donors, and so on, have actively pulled in funds to mitigate hunger ills, the country must do more and donate through CSR partnerships for child health.
The interventions of healthcare funding
The funding will further help adopt tools beyond the prevalent methods of monitoring children’s health. Here’s how: In India, the most important government tool to track a child’s health and nutrition is the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), which provides a supplement nutrition programme to facilitate education. However, services like ICDS and midday school meals have become irregular following the prolonged closure of schools due to the pandemic and poor maintenance of primary schools, disproportionately affecting children living in multi-dimensional poverty as these vulnerable youth have been largely dependent on these services to fulfil their rights and entitlements
Further, more budgetary allocations must be strategised to afford services like RUTF (Ready to Use Therapeutic Food) to help with malnutrition in children under 5 years. According to a UNICEF estimate, it costs about Rs 7,000 to complete one course of RUTF with an amount of 10-15 kgs over eight to six weeks without considering the transportation and delivery costs. However, with the pandemic-induced economic distress along with the Ukraine-Russia war, the cost may have increased by manifolds.
India’s children are their future
With so many challenges lining the way up for the improved health of a child, it is imperative for socially-inclined businesses to partner with nonprofits for child health which will help in further collaborations with project partners at the grassroots levels and bring about a sustainable transformation in India’s health narrative.
Children are the future of the country and to ensure their well-being, one needs to invest in their health. Healthy children ensure a healthy country and prosperity. Moreover, most adult health complexities trickle down to their childhood. So it is important to maintain a healthy childhood to avoid medical complications in later years.
Further, health funders must donate for child health for several other connecting factors; it also leads you to ensure the proper health of the country’s mothers and women as the health of a child is closely related to a mother’s nutrition. Second, one needs to partner and donate for child health as they are the most vulnerable population of a country, dependent on others for resources.
What we do for healthy children of India
At Smile Foundation, we believe in equal healthcare for all. With our two-pronged approach to providing curative and preventive services, we address the gaps in the availability, accessibility and affordability of healthcare.
We actively promote health-seeking behaviour within communities, addressing their unique disease burdens and providing essential health education. By strengthening and supplementing existing government services, we enhance the overall healthcare infrastructure. Our initiatives improve access to maternal and child healthcare, ensuring that mothers and children receive the care they need for healthy lives.
We are also dedicated to reducing out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for families, helping to alleviate the financial strain of medical costs. Through our efforts, we aim to meet the goals of Universal Health Coverage and support the Ayushman Bharat initiative of the Government of India.
Additionally, we implement community health camps, mobile health units and telemedicine services to reach remote and underserved areas in rural and urban slums of India, ensuring that even the most marginalised populations have access to quality healthcare. Our programmes also focus on preventive measures, such as vaccination drives, nutritional support, and health awareness campaigns, to create a healthier future for all.
Join us at Smile Foundation as we work towards a healthier, more equitable world, where everyone has the opportunity to lead a healthy life.
