Abstract
The paper presents a wealth quartile analysis of the urban subset of the third round of Demographic Health Survey of India to unmask intra-urban nutrition disparities in women. Maternal thinness and moderate/ severe anaemia among women of the poorest urban quartile was 38.5% and 20% respectively and 1.5-1.8 times higher than the rest of urban population. Receipt of pre- and postnatal nutrition and health education and compliance to iron folic acid tablets during pregnancy was low across all quartiles. One-fourth (24.5%) of households in the lowest urban quartile consumed salt with no iodine content, which was 2.8 times higher than rest of the urban population (8.7%). The study highlights the need to use poor-specific urban data for planning and suggests (i) routine field assessment of maternal nutritional status in outreach programmes, (ii) improving access to food subsidies, subsidized adequately-iodized salt and food supplementation programmes, (iii) identifying alternative iron supplementation methods, and (iv) institutionalizing counselling days.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 531-537 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition |
Volume | 31 |
Issue number | 4 |
State | Published - Dec 1 2013 |
Keywords
- India
- Slums
- Undernutrition
- Urban poor
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Food Science
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
- Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis