Half of Indian teenage girls underweight, anaemic; 4 in 10 defecate in open
As many as 50% of teenage Indian girls are underweight, 52% are anaemic, about 39% still defecate in the open and about 46% do not use hygienic methods of menstrual protection. These are the findings of a new survey report, the Teen Age Girls report (or the TAG report), released by Nanhi Kali, a project by the Naandi Foundation, which works with adolescent girls. As aspirations of teenage Indian girls soar, as we reported in the first part of the series, most of them struggle with gender norms and a lack of ‘new age skills’--such as travelling alone or typing out a document on a computer in English--as we reported in the second part of the series. This concluding part looks at the status of health and access to sanitation, at a time when 63.2 million teenage Indian girls are set to be first-time voters in 2019. The health of the teenage girl holds significance not only for her own life, but also for the health and well-being of the children she may have. The ...