India is home to the bulk of the world’s undernourished children, with 50% of Indian children suffering from some form of undernutrition, mainly wasting or stunting. Karnataka has been cited to be one of the states which have experienced high economic growth but continue to perform poorly on the child nutrition front (NITI Aayog (2016); Banerjee and Klasen (2018)).
The Covid-19 pandemic and its associated disruptions to schools and anganwadi centres has resulted in the loss of a guaranteed means of food for children, for many of whom this would be the first full meal of the day. Due to lockdowns, employment and income losses, food supply chain disruptions and diversion of resources to meet immediate public health challenges, nutrition gaps are likely to be further exacerbated unless there is a well-planned strategy to prevent such discontinuity.
There is a need to understand the myriad of ways in which Covid-19 or any such public health disaster can impact the supplementary nutrition interventions to reduce its potential impacts in the future. In this study, we propose to understand the multiple potential impacts of Covid-19 on nutrition and nutrition service delivery and on maternal and child nutrition status in Karnataka as part of this initiative. The project has been undertaken with the objective of preparing for and mitigating negative impacts of Covid-19 on maternal and child nutrition.
