Clusters of Under-Five Malnutrition Despite Overall Decline from 2010 to 2020: Geo-Spatial Depiction of Anganwadi Centre Data from Chandigarh, India

Background: Malnutrition, especially undernutrition presents a serious concern for developing nations such as India. Children are among the worst affected. With only a few years at hand to achieve global nutritional targets (2025), a renewed commitment is required in the monitoring and prevention of malnutrition. Objectives: To ascertain the decadal change in childhood (under-five) malnutrition in Anganwadi Centres (AWCs)/day-care centres of a city in north India using a Geographic Information System (GIS) based approach. Methodology: A comparative analysis was done using GIS mapping to study the decadal change in the nutritional status in selected AWCs in the study area from 2010 to 2020. Data regarding prevalence of moderate and severe malnutrition were collected from 60 randomly selected AWCs. Findings: Results were presented using comparative maps with bar charts and multivariate clustering using K-means algorithm. The overall percentage of moderate malnutrition in the 60 AWCs declined from 44.4% (2010) to 8.7% (2020); while for severe malnutrition a decline from 1.2% (2010) to 0.6% (2020) was noted. Conclusions: Overall, an improvement was seen in terms of both moderate and severe malnutrition prevalence in the AWCs assessed. The results however need to be seen in light of difference in classification and possibility of reporting errors. Recommendation: A GIS based approach can help program managers in identifying clusters with adverse rates of malnutrition; sort immediate areas of action and plan targeted interventions to pace up the reduction in prevalence of malnutrition. A lower prevalence of malnutrition translates to lower mortality of children under the age of 5 years.