The Hindu Business Line : Survey highlights health inequalities

THE state of health of Indian women presents a paradox. While more than one third of rural women suffer from chronic malnourishment, a third of their urban counterparts face overweight problems!

"It is double burden of nutritional disorders," according to Mr K.S. James, co-editor of a book that comprised articles analysing the data collected through NFHS-2 (National Family Health Survey) conducted in 1998-99.

The book titled `Demographic change health inequality and human development in India' was published by CESS (Centre for Economic and Social Studies).

The disorders are just an indicator of the growing health inequality in the country. And this inequality spreads across income, caste and region.

"Health inequality has a multilevel structure. We need to capture the picture in its totality, we need to search new methodologies," an analyst felt.

It is observed that socio-economic positions and caste-based inequalities were playing a crucial role in determining mortality. The NFHS data found that the proportion of underweight children under three years of age was very high at 47 per cent in India.

One of the articles in the book pointed out that current levels of malnutrition were unacceptably high. "About half of the pre-school children are malnourished and are exposed to the risk of functional impairments," it said.

Malnutrition of the mother was found to be the major factor determining malnutrition of the child. Some of the middle income States such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu registered comparatively better nutritional achievements than higher income State such as Maharashtra and Gujarat.

It suggested that a concerted effort is needed to break the vicious circle of (mother-child-mother) of malnutrition.

Perhaps for the first time, NFHS collected data on health behaviour of people of various walks of life.

AIDS awareness low: Notwithstanding huge spending on AIDS awareness, the data revealed that majority of women surveyed did not hear about the disease.

"Of those who heard about AIDS, only 37 per cent didn't have any knowledge of preventive measures. Only five per cent had good knowledge about ways of preventing it."