Data shows shockingly high rate of anaemia in children aged 6-59 months in NE

Continuing on the data we shared last week where we talked about anaemia among women between 15-49 years of age, this week we look at anaemia rates among children aged between 6 months and 59 months (under 5 years of age).

It is clear that the issue of anaemia is not just restricted to women. In fact, the situation seems much worse among children, since unlike the previous week’s data, in this case no state can claim to be doing well. Nearly every state in Northeast has a staggeringly high number of anaemic children, which also means that unless things improve drastically they are likely to suffer in school too and suffer from a lack of concentration among other things. Assam emerges as the worst performing state in this category, with over 66% children (rural and urban combined) between 6 months and 59 months anaemic, while Meghalaya emerges the best performing state but even there, over 40% children (rural and urban combined) are anaemic.

Please note that data for Sikkim has not been collated from NFHS 5 for 2019/20 as of now, and we will publish a separate story on Sikkim regarding this topic as and when we get hold of the data.