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The Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition
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ISSN: 1606-0997 EISSN: 1606-0997
Vol. 31, No. 4, 2014, pp. 531-537
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Bioline Code: hn13064
Full paper language: English
Document type: Report
Document available free of charge
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The Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition, Vol. 31, No. 4, 2014, pp. 531-537
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Nutritional Disparities among Women in Urban India
Agarwal, Siddharth & Sethi, Vani
Abstract
The paper presents a wealth quartile analysis of the urban subset of the third round of Demographic Health
Survey of India to unmask intra-urban nutrition disparities in women. Maternal thinness and moderate/
severe anaemia among women of the poorest urban quartile was 38.5% and 20% respectively and 1.5-1.8
times higher than the rest of urban population. Receipt of pre- and postnatal nutrition and health education
and compliance to iron folic acid tablets during pregnancy was low across all quartiles. One-fourth
(24.5%) of households in the lowest urban quartile consumed salt with no iodine content, which was 2.8
times higher than rest of the urban population (8.7%). The study highlights the need to use poor-specific
urban data for planning and suggests (i) routine field assessment of maternal nutritional status in outreach
programmes, (ii) improving access to food subsidies, subsidized adequately-iodized salt and food supplementation
programmes, (iii) identifying alternative iron supplementation methods, and (iv) institutionalizing
counselling days.
Keywords
Slums; Undernutrition; Urban poor; India
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