Big Data and Near-Real-Time Monitoring of Food Emergencies
Share Article MILWAUKEE (PRWEB) December 17, 2020 It’s no secret that today’s economic climate has drastically shifted due to COVID-19. In an AAEA session taking place virtually for the 2021 ASSA Annual Meeting, AAEA members and researchers will examine food insecurity with new technology, the poverty and malnutrition indicators, whether or not cell phone metadata can predict food security, and the vegetation index.
The organizer of the session, Rob Vos from the International Food Policy Research Institute says, “Even before COVID-19, global hunger was on the rise, especially where livelihoods are affected by conflict, climate change and economic collapse. While the risk factors are known, their timely monitoring is tedious, but badly needed. This session should show us the prospects of filling this void and save lives.”
India could be seeing an increase in child undernutrition, reversing decades of gains, early data from the just-released first phase of the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS) indicate. If subsequent phases display similar trends, this would represent the first increase in child stunting low height for age in 20 years. More infants now receive immunisations, data released on December 12 show. On the positive side, fewer women in 15 of the 22 states and union territories (UTs) for which data were released reported that they experienced marital violence compared to 2015-16, when the last round of the survey was conducted. However, more young women in nine states compared to 2015-16 reported that they had experienced sexual violence as children, the data show.
infant nutrition play a role in stunting; hence increases in stunting are not necessarily a referendum on the health or nutrition policies of the current government,
Purnima Menon, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, cautioned. “But it is not good news,” she said, adding that stunting of children born between 2015 and 2019 likely reflected, in part, the economic slowdown of the last few years.
We spoke at length with Purnima Menon, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, where she is theme leader for South Asia Nutrition Programs in International Food Policy Research Institute’s Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division and director of Partnerships and Opportunities to Strengthen and Harmonize Actions for Nutrition in India, an initiative to support evidence-based nutrition policy. Menon serves on advisory groups for the
These four are key metrics and their data are used in several global indices such as the Global Hunger Index.
Child wasting reflects acute undernutrition and refers to children having low weight for their height. India has always had a high level of child wasting but instead of reducing it, several states such as Telangana, Kerala, Bihar, and Assam as well as the UT of J&K have witnessed an increase.
Others like Maharashtra and West Bengal have been stagnant on this.
When it comes to the proportion of underweight children, again, several big states, Gujarat, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Telangana, Assam and Kerala, have seen an increase.
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