India’s more developed States, especially its southern States, have seen improvements in child nutrition over the last five years, but have a patchy record on immunisation, new official data shows. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has begun releasing data for the fourth round of the District Level Health Survey, which covers all of the country, except the eight backward northern States known as the Empowered Action Group (EAG) states, and Assam.

As of Friday, data for all the other major States, except Gujarat, was available. The new numbers deal with nutritional and health coverage for 2012-13 based on a large sample survey conducted by the Mumbai-based International Institute for Population Studies. The DLHS data confirms the fall in child stunting previously reported by The Hindu from other sources. In all five southern States, child stunting has declined to between 20 and 30 percentage of all children. Maharashtra, Karnataka, Haryana and Punjab have seen the largest declines in child stunting.

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