Prevalence of Underweight and Wasting among 3-6 Year Old Children in East Midnapore, West Bengal, India

Background: A widely accepted assumption is that childhood experiences set the stage for lifetime experiences.Nutrition is one of the most important factors, which influences human growth. The monitoring of children’s nutritional status is a fundamental tool for the evaluation of their health conditions and a unique opportunity for obtaining objective measures for the health assessment of a population. One of the major health problems in many developing countries including India is widespread prevalence of under nutrition among pre-school children. In India, approximately 60 million children are underweight (ACC/SCN, 2004).The Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS) program, which now covers almost all development blocks in India, is potentially well-poised to address some of the underlying causes of present undernutrition.