Be it stunting in children or underweight/wasting in every indicator of malnourishment, Odisha’s pace of development seems apparently slower in reaching its desired goal, said a conference organised by Siddha Development Research and Consultancy (SDRC), a social enterprise based in Bhubaneswar. The company launched its first infographic, ‘Nutrition Story of Odisha’ through the conference entitled ‘Data for change’ here today. The infographic states that the neo-natal mortality rate of Odisha is 32 as compared to 24 of the entire country, Infant mortality rate is 44 compared to 34 of India and Under-five mortality rate of Odisha is 50 as compared to 39 of India.
Furthermore the company through the infographic has also estimated that that the rate at which the Government is working it is only possible to reduce the stunting rate (low height-for-age) in children to only 26.6% while it had set the target to reduce the same to 20.5% by 2025. On the other hand the Government can reduce the underweight (height of child and weight) rate in children to only 31.1% against its target of reducing it to 20.7% by 2022. The situation becomes more critical when comes to reducing the wasting rate (low weight-for-height) in children. The Government’s present efforts can reduce the wasting rate to only 21.1% against its target of reducing it to 4.9% in 2025.
In the seminar, Shri Amulya Ratna Nanda, former secretary, Health and Family Welfare, GOI was invited as the Chief Guest where Prof. Anup Kumar Dash, Utkal University and Non-official Director, NABARD, Odisha, Shri Jagadananda, Former Information Commissioner, GOO, Shri Raj Gautam Mitra, Former Inter-Regional Advisor on Statistical Capacity Building and Training, United Nations Statistics Division, New York and Shri Ramesh Chandra Panda, IAS and former secretary, Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises and Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation, GOI were the other distinguished guests for the seminar.
The company will launch a E-tathya platform in joint collaboration with Centre for Youth and Social Development (CYSD) which will work in various fields like health, water, sanitation and women empowerment. Elaborating more on this, founder of SDRC, Ratnakar Panigrahi said, “we will dedicate a E-tathya platform which will be made available not only for the state and international level workers but also for the grass root workers. Through this platform we will take development initiatives through technology. We will launch it in June, 2018 and collaborate with state level, national level and international level organizations.”
A huge number of academicians, Govt and Non-Govt practitioners, researchers and IT analysts participated in the conference and were enlightened on the various aspects of data and technology.