182 million children in poor nations lack nurture; pollution, climate change among risk factors: Study

In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), three-fourths of those aged three or four lack — nearly 182 million children — access to adequate nurture, thereby risking healthy development, according to a new series paper published in ‘The Lancet’ journal.

Child development was also affected by air pollution, climate change and exposure to chemicals, which were emerging environmental risk factors, said an international team, including researchers from the Centre for Chronic Disease Control (CCDC), New Delhi.

The series builds on the foundation of the first 1,000 days of life — referring to the time period starting conception until two years old — and highlights how the ‘next 1,000 days’ (from 2-5 years of age) was a crucial window of opportunity for providing nurturing care to children, the researchers say.

During this stage of “next 1,000 days”, children were often not in direct regular contact with health or education services, with fewer than one in three children aged three or four attending early childhood care and education programmes in LMICs, said the researchers.

The authors called for an increased investment for this stage of child development, with a particular focus on improving access to high-quality childhood care and education programmes, which should involve adequately paid and trained teachers and reasonable teacher-student ratios.

These programmes should also include child-centered play, evidence-based curricula and warm, stimulating, and responsive classroom interactions, they said.

Author Aditi Roy, senior research scientist, CCDC, said, “The main concern for India is ensuring an equitable access to quality ECCE. There needs to be a holistic approach with an activity-based curriculum rather than traditional academic-focus rote learning which goes against the National Education Policy recommendations.”

Further, data regarding children in India attending ECCE programmes was sketchy, with no reliable estimates of current reality, she said.

A 2022 report by a government's task force on ECCE said 285.82 lakh children aged 3-6 years were covered under early childhood education in 2022 under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), with an almost equal number of boys and girls.

A 2018 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) survey found that over 70 per cent of 3-year-olds, 85 per cent of 4-year-olds, 92 per cent of 5-year-olds and 96 per cent of 6-year-olds were attending a pre-school or school. The survey, facilitated by the non-profit ‘Pratham’, was conducted in nearly 600 rural districts.

“However, as there is no data for private entities, it is hard to provide an estimate. But clearly, there is a steady increase in the number of private pre-schools, also referred to as ‘affordable primary schools’ in India with questionable quality and no regulation,” Roy cautioned.

While in recent years, the National Family Household Survey-5 has collected data for children aged five years who attended pre-primary school during the school year 2019-20, Roy said the data might not reflect the current reality because that was a Covid year.

“The ongoing NFHS 6 survey will (possibly) give us more recent data in the coming months,” she said.