Harvard study claiming 67 lakh children in India without food is malicious: WCD

New Delhi: After a dismissal by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development on Tuesdays refuted the Harvard study, which claimed that 67 lakh children in India are “zero-food” children.

The ministry said the article is a “deliberate and malicious attempt” to sensationalise “fake news”.

The Harvard study, published in the JAMA Network Open, does not acknowledge the importance of breast milk for infants. “Out of the so-called 19.3% Zero Food Children referred to by the study, 17.8% had received breast milk and only 1.5% children have been claimed as non-breast fed,” the statement said.

The ministry also said the study does not have a scientific definition of “zero-food children”. “The methodology followed is opaque and has attempted to interpret single-day recalls by those who were supposedly contacted. No state government or any private organisation in India has ever reported about starving children,” the ministry said in a statement.

“The JAMA article does not acknowledge the importance of breast milk for infants who are more than six months old and has instead looked at only the feeding of such infants with animal milk/formula, solids or semi-solids etc.,” it added.

The ministry also said that the study has not referred to publicly available data of more than eight crore children measured on the Poshan Tracker through the 13.9 lakh Anganwadi Centres across the country.