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NEW DELHI — Malnutrition rates among Indian children are among the world's highest and cause stunted growth in about half of children under five years, researchers quoting their study in the Lancet medical journal said on Tuesday.
These children account for one-third of the global population of stunted children, Dr. Robert Black, the lead author of a series of papers published in the Lancet this year, said in New Delhi on Tuesday.
"Undernourished children are more likely to become short adults and to give birth to smaller babies," Dr. Black, who is from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said.
"Stunting in the first two years leads to irreversible damage into adult life," he said.
There is much debate in India over the country's level of poverty, with many critics saying that indexes such as malnutrition remained far too high for a trillion-dollar economy that has been booming in recent years.
Undernourished children also face developmental problems that will deter them socially and economically as they grow older, the researchers said.
They said proper breastfeeding for the first two years of a child's life and adequate vitamin supplements in food could help in reversing the problem.
Indian government officials said they were worried by the impact.
"We need to do more as a country because of the long-term consequences of undernourishment and we are not doing enough now," M.K. Bhan, secretary of the department of biotechnology in India said.
In India, distribution of subsidized food for poor people through the government has miserably failed, officials say, with nearly one-third or even half of the food meant for poorest of the poor siphoned off by corrupt officials.
"We need to give food security to people," Mr. Bhan said.
Researchers said women, especially pregnant women, were not getting enough nourishment.
"One-third of all boys and girls are undernourished because the mother is undernourished," added Purnima Menon of the International Food Policy Research Institute.
