Bhubaneswar, July 23 (UNI) Nearly 28 per cent of children under six years of age in Odisha are stunted, while 12 per cent are found to be underweight.
Similarly, 3.21 per cent of children in the 0-5 age group were found to be wasted and 11.63 per cent of children underweight, according to Poshan Tracker data for the month of June 2025.
Poshan Tracker consists of pregnant women, lactating mothers, children up to 6 years of age and adolescent girls as beneficiaries.
It keeps track of interventions to the beneficiaries, and their progress is further monitored by Supervisors, CDPOs and DPOs through daily and monthly reports.
The levels of underweight and wasting in children as obtained from Poshan Tracker are much less than those projected by NFHS 5, said official sources.
As per the World Health Organisation’s Child Growth Standard, stunting causes irreversible physical and mental damage to children.
A stunted child is too short for their age, does not fully develop, and stunting reflects chronic under-nutrition during the most critical periods of growth and development in early life, said paediatricians.
Similarly, a child is regarded as underweight if they’re in the bottom 5th percentile for weight compared to their height. Underweight is not only classified compared to other children; their
age, but to their height as we clinically look for a child to be proportionate, they said.
Child stunting and underweight issues occur to below five years of kids mostly due to malnutrition and lack of hygienic living conditions, they said, adding that nutrient content in food intake could help them recover from these physical deficiencies.
