Sunken Eyes, Frail Skin: 4-Month-Old Dies Of Malnutrition In Madhya Pradesh

Amid government claims of a well-oiled nutrition machinery and countless schemes to protect infants, four-month-old Hussain Raza from Marwa village in Madhya Pradesh's Satna has become the latest symbol of a crisis that refuses to end. Late Tuesday night, the severely malnourished child died in the district hospital after battling for life in the PICU for four days.

His frail frame, skin stretched over bones, sunken eyes, and lips that had long lost their colour told a story of neglect that no statistic can soften. Doctors said Hussain weighed barely two and a half kilograms, while a healthy child of his age should weigh at least five. He was so weak that he did not even have the strength to cry.

The child's mother, Asma Bano, had rushed him to the district hospital last Saturday.

When paediatrician Sandeep Dwivedi first examined him in the OPD, even he was shaken by the child's condition. The baby was immediately screened, diagnosed as "severely malnourished," and sent to the Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre before being shifted to the PICU. For four days, doctors tried to stabilise him, but his condition never improved. Hospital records show that although Hussain weighed three kilograms at birth on July 2, a bout of pneumonia soon after weakened him drastically.

His weight dropped instead of rising, and shockingly, he had not received a single vaccination, leaving an already fragile body even more vulnerable.

Following his death, the Health Department issued notices to three personnel: Medical Officer S P Srivastava, health worker Lakshmi Rawat, and ASHA worker Urmila Satnami for failing to identify and follow up on a case of severe malnutrition.

Officials maintained that negligence in tracking high-risk infants "will not be tolerated," but the action comes too late for Hussain. His death has once again exposed the cracks in village-level monitoring, anganwadi tracking, and field-level health response, raising questions about the intent and efficiency of the state's nutrition apparatus.

What makes the tragedy even more distressing is that Hussain's story is not an exception. In August, a 15-month-old girl named Divyanshi died in Shivpuri, weighing just 3.7 kilograms. Before that, one-and-a-half-year-old Radhika from Sheopur died at only 2.5 kilograms, even though children her age typically weigh 10 to 11.5 kilograms. A similar case was reported in July from Bhind, where the family blamed malnutrition for their child's death. Each incident follows the same pattern, and each time, the blame is settled on "system failure."

Government data tabled in the Assembly underlined the scale of the crisis. Between 2020 and June 2025, 85,330 children were admitted to Nutrition Rehabilitation Centres in tribal development blocks, with annual admissions rising sharply from 11,566 in 2020-21 to 20,741 in 2024-25. More than one million children in Madhya Pradesh are classified as malnourished, while 1.36 lakh fall under the "severe wasting" category. In April 2025, the national average for severe and moderate malnutrition among children under five was 5.40 per cent. In Madhya Pradesh, it stood far higher at 7.79 per cent. Even more alarming, 45 out of 55 districts in the state were in the "red zone" as per central government data from May, where over 20 per cent of children are severely underweight for their age.

On paper, the state spends Rs 980 per child at NRCs, while anganwadis are allocated Rs 8 per day per child, and Rs 12 per day for severely malnourished children. On the ground, however, children continue to slip through the cracks.

Hussain Raza's death, like many before it, underscores a painful truth that despite schemes, budgets, committees, and campaigns, malnutrition in Madhya Pradesh remains a human tragedy unfolding in slow motion.