One-third of world stunned children below age 5 and half of wasted children belong to India. It results in
high mortality among these children and disability and affects future generation intellectual capability and
human capital. Covid-19 will and have added insult to the injury, it is estimated to add minimum 10,000
deaths in the coming six months of children below age 5. Dietary intake and underlying diseases are the
direct reason behind malnutrition coupled with many indirect factors like food insecurity, low maternal
education,poor access to health care services, access to clean drinking water and poor hygiene. Some of
our great tools to fight malnutritions and impart education like Mid-day meal scheme got hampered during
the lockdown, pushing our fight against malnutrition further back. Some immediate steps need to be taken
to put it back on track such as: deciding on a core indicator to review progress, using local available high
nutritious food, specially taking care of young and infant childrens, take home ration system, making child
specific schemes like PMMVY, PMGKAY reach the last mile, efficient PDS system and making use of
technology to better manage and monitor progress. Additionally not only nutrition specific interventions
will do the job we need to implement nutrition specific plus complementary nutrition specific intervention.
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