FEEDING CHANGE

As Dr Sandeep Kakuste places a five-month-old girl on a digital weighing scale, the reading brings a smile to his face. The infant, who weighed just 1.7 kilograms at birth—way lower than the standard norm of 3.2 kg—now weighs 5.5 kg.

-  Kiran D. Tare in Nandurbar

The doctor commends the mother, though cautioning her not to give up on regular breastfeeding, for which she has been regularly trained by the health subcentre’s staff. “This [weight gain] happened only because of scientific breastfeeding,” says the doctor, who is posted as a community health officer (CHO) at Nandarkhe village in the tribal-dominated Nandurbar district of Maharashtra.

According to district authorities, almost 500 babies who participated in a study between August 1 and 8 recorded a weight gain in the range of 300-800 grams. This is much higher than the World Health Organization-accepted norm of 266 grams of weight gain per week in the first two months, which drops to about 50 grams by age one. For Nandurbar, which has the dubious distinction of having the second-most number of malnourished children in Maharashtra (after Amravati), this is a promising development. The district has seen 507 malnourishment-related deaths between January and August this year. According to an ongoing public interest litigation in the Bombay High Court, children accounted for at least 86 of these deaths.