The Orissa High Court has directed the State government to draw an action plan to ensure complete absence of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) children and reduction of Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM) children by half in the State, by the end of 2023.
The SAM children are those in the red zone with a higher risk of contracting secondary infection. This category may suffer from severe illnesses. MAM children, on the other hand, show signs of malnourishment but are in the yellow zone which means their lives are not under threat.
Hearing a public interest litigation, a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice S. Muralidhar and Justice G. Satapathy directed the Chief Secretary of Odisha to convene an immediate review meeting with the Ministries of Women and Child Development, SC and ST Development, Civil Supplies, School and Mass Education and Health and Family Welfare in the next one month, and draw an action plan to achieve the target.
The Odisha Commission for Women, the Odisha Food Commission and the Odisha State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (OSCPCR) were asked to be part of the meeting.
One Mantu Das had filed the PIL with the Orissa High Court that young children, many of them belonging to the scheduled tribes, from villages Ghatisahi, Kiajhar, Salinjagha, Nadiabhanga, Dhuligarh, Chania and Anagundi in the Danagadi Block of Jajpur district were suffering from chronic malnutrition, living under semi-starvation and prolonged hunger. They were vulnerable to diseases and many had lost their lives, he said.
Identifying vulnerable women
Mr. Das had also pointed out that in the absence of Aadhar cards, these children had got completely excluded from the public distribution system and other welfare schemes. In Ghatisahi village, only 160 out of 309 villagers had Aadhar cards and therefore, were unable to get the monthly quotas from the public distribution system, he mentioned. The instances of children dying of malnutrition have also been highlighted in the petition.
He had provided a list of nine children who were facing severe malnutrition. The Jajpur district administration had identified four children to be in SAM category and three in MAM category. One child had died of malnourishment. (The child was suffering from celebral palsy and was left unattended to for four or five days.)
During the course of the hearing, the Chief Justice told government officials not to reduce human life to statistics and pointed out that even one child or person dying of malnutrition in the year 2023, was a deep shame. He further said there must be many more deaths happening unnoticed in the State and the country.
According to Subha Sharma, WCD secretary, in November 2022, the Odisha government had launched a targeted intervention providing more nutritional support to SAM children and there were reports of SAM children moving to MAM category.
According to an affidavit of the Union Woman and Child Development Ministry, the weight of 1.29 lakh children was measured in Jajpur district; and 0.78% of them were SAM children while 2.21% were found to be MAM, which was lower than the national average of 2.26% SAM and 4.75% MAM, respectively.
In Odisha, there were 49,205 children aged below six identified to be SAM by July 2022 while it came down to 48,492 in August 2023. By February 2023, as many as 30,919 children were found to be SAM in Odisha.
“What the petition brought out that situation of children in Danagadi and Sukinda block of Jajpur district, whereas there could be other districts and blocks of Odisha where situation may be equally bad or perhaps even worse,” the Orissa HC observed.
Taking note that there were 2,820 SAM category children in Keonjhar district, the Division Bench said it required immediate attention and the District Collector and the Chief District Medical Officer of Keonjhar undertake visits to all blocks to ascertain the factual position regarding children in SAM and MAM categories within one month. The Keonjhar Collector and CDMO were also asked to identify vulnerable women.
