As per WHO’s 2018 Global Nutrition Report, India has the highest number of ‘stunted’ children in the world.Around third of all stunted children worldwide are to be found in India as per the recently released WHO’s Global Nutrition Report, 2018.Stunting among children aged under five has fallen from 32.6% (in 2000) to 22.2% (in 2017).

2018 Report: Global Profile

• Stunting among children aged under five has fallen from 6 per cent in 2000 to 22.2 per cent in 2017
• 20 million babies are born with low birth weight each year.
• 3 million Children in the world over are overweight, while 9 per cent of adults are overweight or obese.
• One third of all women of reproductive age have anaemia.
• Women also have a higher prevalence of obesity than men.

2018 Report: Indian Profile

• India has the highest number of ‘stunted’ children in the world and nearly a third of all stunted children worldwide are to be found in India.
• About 6 million children in India suffer from stunting due to poor nutrition intake in the long term and repeated infections.
• India has 5 million children who are wasted. Among the 50.5 million children who are wasted globally, India has half of the global wasting burden.
• Stunting in India varied greatly from district to district (4 per cent to 65.1 per cent). 239 of 604 districts had stunting levels above 40 per cent.
• As of 2015, the percentage of children Under 5 (both boys and girls) who were stunted was 9 per cent and the percentage of children Under 5 who were wasted was 20.8 per cent.
• The households with the lowest incomes had the highest number of wasting (8 per cent) and stunting (50.7 per cent) among children aged under five years.
• More than half of all women of reproductive age (4 per cent), whether or not they were pregnant, suffered from anaemia.