Kids of urban poor don’t get health access

New Delhi: Despite boasting of development indicators far higher than the national average, children of Delhi’s urban poor continue to be a blind spot. An alternative report by NGO Mobile Creches reveals gaps in official estimates when it comes to immunisation, access to nutrition and health facilities. It also exposes lack of desegregated data for children under 6 and little reliable data on specific sections like street children, disabled children and children of migrant workers.
    Home to 1.9 million children, 50% of who live in slum and squatter settlements, Delhi has a better track record on survival (17 more children per 1,000 live births survive in Delhi than other parts of the country). At least seven more die from preventable causes. Data on state outreach is worrying. Sample this: only 1 in every 4 children among the poor is fully immunised and 1 in 3 children is underweight and stunted. There are only 1.7 ICDS centres per 1,000 children.
    The study — ‘Situational analysis of the young child in Delhi’ — has been conducted in 21 basti clusters in seven districts covering 4,600 households. It found that 15% are acutely malnourished and twothirds suffer from nutritional anaemia. While Delhi’s own report card reflects 100% compliance of birth registration, NFHS reports lower coverage at nearly half and the Mobile Creches report found only 1 in 5 birth registrations from slum communities.
    Officially, ICDS reaches 20% young children in Delhi, but the report estimates that only 10% of the actual demand is possibly being met.
    Expressing concern over the gap of basic facilities to 64% of the city’s population, Mobile Creches founder member Devika Singh said, “The worrying part is discrepancy of development indicators between Delhi’s population and its urban poor. Delhi is considered one of the good performing states with better infrastructure and access to health facilities and yet there are large sections of the population that do not have adequate access to basic services.’’
    Advocating desegregated data for children under six years, the report says that there must be separate data for children below one, for under-threes as the interventions required for each age group are different. It has also pointed out the glaring lapses in data where the most vulnerable sections like street children, children of migrant workers and commercial sex workers and children with disability have been ignored in official estimates.