Fighting the Odds

Photo credit: UNICEF India/2015/Prashanth Vishwanathan

By: Saket Suman
The Statesman

As children we were taught the significance of Vitamin A in our Biology lessons and were often told about the fatalities that its deficiency can cause. But not everybody is fortunate in our unfortunate times. Jharkhand, carved out of Bihar in 2000, with a total population of 32.9 million, living in about 1.2 lakh dwellings and having 33,000 villages, is perhaps one of the worst-affected states. According to Census 2001, about 38 per cent of the people in the state belong to the disadvantaged communities of Scheduled Tribes (26.3 per cent) and Scheduled Castes (11.8 per cent). Out of the total population, 5.2 million (15.8 per cent) are children aged less than six years and 12.7 million (38.6 per cent) are children less than 18 years  ols and about 74 per cent of people live in villages. Amid the poverty, ignorance and hardships that people live in the rural parts of the state, Biology lessons that throw light on the significance of Vitamin A are unfathomable and as such malnutrition, immunisation and deficiency of iodine and iron is a huge threat to the children in most parts of the state. Read more