Two phases of screening of children under six years of age, done between April 2024 and March 2025, showed 15.4% and 14.3% respectively to be malnourished, the "Child Nutrition - Key Challenges and Strategies" report submitted by State Planning Commission to Chief Minister MK Stalin on Monday, July 7, noted.

The first phase of screening done from April 24 to September 24 showed 15.4 % children to be malnourished, which included 10.2 % to be underweight, 3.3 % to have moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) and 1.9 % to have severe acute malnutrition (SAM), stated a report by The New Indian Express.

The second phased done between October 24 and March 25 showed 14.3 % to be malnourished, which included 8 % to be malnourished, 3.8 % to have MAM, and 2.5 % to have SAM.

According to the data presented in the report, 36.6 lakh children were screened in the first phase and 34.9 lakh were screened in the second phase. It said both the phases targeted to screen 38 lakh children, but did not explicitly say whether the two represented two different groups of children. The report also did not elaborate on measures initiated based on these findings.

The screening was done as part of the Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK), a union government's initiative for such screening done with the state government.

TNIE reached out to four of the six people credited as contributors and reviewers in the report on Monday for clarification, all of whom said they would have to check and get back.

The report also cited the outcome of an earlier screening of 44 lakh children enrolled in Anganwadi centres in March 2022 under the Ilam Siraar Nanvazhvai Thedi (Towards wellbeing of young children) initiative, which found 10.3 lakh to be undernourished.

However, a subsequent screening of these 10.3 lakh children under RBSK found 5.78 lakh (56.3 %) to be normal in all three forms of nutrition viz., weight for age, height for age, weight for height while another 4.5 lakh (43.68 %) to be undernourished, as per the report by The New Indian Express.

A release from the government said, the report presented to CM provided a comprehensive overview of child nutrition, focusing specifically on the causes and strategies to be adopted for SAM and MAM, based on the inputs shared by experts who took part in the workshop organised in this regard by the State Planning Commission in March.