- A horrible picture revealed
The National Nutrition Survey paints a bleak picture of the present, but the future that can be seen in its quiet statement of facts is as bleak. It shows that in Balochistan, no less than 61.3 per cent of women of reproductive age are suffering from anaemia; while so do 73.7 per cent of adolescent boys and girls. It is bad enough that a heavy majority of the Baloch mothers of today are anaemic, but the proportion is likelier than not to rise in future. As the adolescents carry their anaemia into their childbearing years, the proportion of anaemic mothers will only increase. Anaemia is bad news, as it impacts the whole range of human health, as well as reproduction. While it is one of the causes of infertility, for both males and females, it also leads to problems during pregnancy and in the birth itself. If an anaemic mother does bear a child, its health (and thus chances of survival) are appreciably lower.
Already nearly two in ten children suffer from wasting, which is low weight for height, while nearly half are stunted. No less than 50 per cent of the population faces food insecurity, which means that already the people skimp on their food. These are the problems that the federal and Balochistan governments should be addressing. First, there should be a horror at the kind of future generations that are being raised, which cannot really contribute much to the welfare or prosperity of the society they will compose as adults. Second, there should be grave concern about how that society will tackle the health and other issues of such a large proportion of the population.
It might be a wrongheaded approach to respond by raising the banner of armed insurrection, but let it not be said that it is incomprehensible. So long as there is mass anaemia, so long as there is widespread food insecurity, so long as there is the sort of hunger that these figures have behind them, there will be no shortage of recruits for the kind of extremism espoused by both nationalists and religious militants. However, that should be an ancillary reason. The real need to solve this issue is that all children deserve a future in which they can develop their potential fully, and that includes Baloch children.