*Professor and Head, Department of Applied Economics, Kannur University, India
**Research Assistant, ICMR-Ad-Hoc Project, Department of Applied Economics, Kannur University, India
Online published on 6 October, 2014.
Prevalence of hunger and malnutrition among the tribal children children below age group five are always there in their hamlets for years together because of the forest habitats, extreme poverty and taboos. `The study was conducted during 2013–14 in the forest belt of Thirunelli Panchayath in Wayanad District in Kerala where 203 children belongs to 100 households below the age of 5 years from four major tribal groups. A sample survey was conducted for collecting their anthropometric measurement, diet, health checkup and family history and also a medical camp was organized to get clear cut measurement of basic chronic and communicable health problems and also to measure the hemoglobin level of the children. The study shows that health and nutrition status of tribal children is very poor and it is mainly due to lack of nutritional and health awareness, bad perception about health followed by them, non-availability of health services, worst infrastructure facilities in the existing health centers.
Health, nutrition, stunting, underweight, wasting, deprivation, anthropometric, disease burden
