More than 5.70 lakh children in Gujarat are malnourished, the Gujarat assembly was informed with the government listing various steps being taken to improve the situation.
Responding to a set of questions raised by Congress MLAs during Question Hour, Women and Child Development Minister Bhanuben Babariya informed that out of 5.70 lakh malnourished children in the state, nearly 4.38 lakh children are underweight, while 1.31 lakh fell in the ‘severely underweight’ category.
Notably, the highly-urbanised district of Ahmedabad accounted for the highest number of malnourished children (56,941), followed by tribal-dominated Dahod (51,321), Banaskantha (48,866), Panchmahal (31,512), Kheda (28,800), Surat (26,682) and Bhavnagar (26,128), Babariya stated in written replies giving the data till end-2023.