India, currently, has one of the highestmalnutrition rates in the world. One-third of its childrenare born with low birth-weight, 43 percent of children underfive are underweight, 48 percent are stunted and 20 percentare wasted. Stunting rates in India are two to seven foldshigher than those of other BRICS countries. Micronutrientdeficiencies are extremely high with almost 75 percent ofthe under threes being anemic, 62 percent deficient invitamin A and over 13 million infants remaining unprotectedfrom iodine deficiency disorders. There are largedifferentials in the prevalence across states and socioeconomic groups. Sixty percent of the malnutrition burdenexists in low income states: Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand,Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. TheGovernment's policy commitment to address malnutritionand the multitude of programs that are being implemented,progress in reducing under nutrition has been slow. Ittherefore becomes imperative to address the malnutritionchallenge and to prevent and reduce maternal and childmalnutrition as early as possible across the life cycleespecially through pregnancy and in the first two years oflife, i.e., in the first 1,000 days of life, and inadolescent girls and women. In order to accelerateimprovements across the states, the Government of India(GOI) has made policy commitments to mobilize multisectoralaction to address the multiple causes of malnutritioneffectively through formulating a multisectoral strategy anda multisectoral program to be implemented in 200 highmalnutrition burden districts of the country. Themultisectoral strategy also aims to bring a strong nutritionfocus in various sectoral plans to address maternal andchild malnutrition.
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