Women and Nutrition in India Some Practical Considerations

• Foundation News 8 • Reviews and Comments: Tamil Nadu's Initiative and Universal immunisation Programme Some Lessons: C. Gopalan 7 3. Women at risk: It can be computed, on the basis of available growth data, that today nearly 24 percent of adult women in the reproductive period have body weights less than 38 kg and 16 percent have heights less than 145 cm4 These women, according to generally accepted criteria proposed by WHO, fall into the 'high risk' category, i.e. they are likely to suffer obstetric complications ar,d give birth to offspring of low birth weight, especially in situations where antenatal care and obstetric services are below par. These observations broadly indicate the magnitude of the unfinished tasks with respect to improvement of health and nutritional status of our women. revealed a shocking proportion of 56 percent of babies with low-birth-weights among deliveries in urban slums of Calcutta2. This figure of 56 percent is probably much higher than what generally obtains in the country; however available evidence would suggest that it is still the case that nearly one-third of babies born in our country are of low-birthweigh! Low-birth-weight of offspring is not only an evidence of poor maternal nutritional status but is also an indicator of possible poor future development of the baby as the pioneering studies of Shanti Ghosh and colleagues had shownB We have, therefore, reason to feel concerned over the persistent high proportion of deliveries of low-birthweight infants in the country.