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Sanjit Sarkar

practices, and infections. Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), a government launched
nutrition program, if strengthened through effective implementations and proper strategies, could
itself play a vital role in improving the child nutrition status in their early ages. Dissemination of
knowledge among mothers on infant and child feeding practices, hygiene and sanitation, and
home-based treatment management during infectious disease among children is crucial in improving
the childcare practice behavior. Community-based platforms like Self-Help Group (SHG) may be
used as important platforms to implement interventions for improved exclusive breastfeeding
and complementary feeding practices. Maternal nutrition and health also seem to be associated
with child malnutrition. Nutrition status of the children is poor for mothers having lower BMI, indi-
cating a positive association between maternal health and child nutrition status. Thus, integrating the
maternal health components with a nutrition program is highly recommended for improving both
maternal and infant health. Although the ICDS has addressed maternal health, the policy is needed to
strengthen and focus more on implementation perspectives.
Several limitations needed to be acknowledged to interpret the results. Firstly, this is a cross- sec-
tional study, which did not track the event history of a child’s malnutrition across their ages. In order
to understand the potential temporal association and dynamics of malnutrition, a cohort prospective
study is more appropriate than a cross-sectional study. Secondly, there is likely a recall bias among
the respondents answering the questions relating to the events that happened in the past such as the
dates of birth of the mother and child. Thirdly, the study could not assess the contribution of expo-
sure to hygiene and sanitation while there is evidence to show that it is an important contributing
factor in the malnutrition of children in their younger age (Rah, Cronin, Badgaiyan et al., 2015).
Fourthly, the results interpreted in this study based on sample data cannot be generalized for the
whole geographical area due to diverse socio-cultural and geographical parameters.
Conflict of Interest and Funding

No conflict of interest has been reported.

Acknowledgements

The author would like express his sincere thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their critical
and beneficial comments, and suggestions for improving the paper. The author is thankful to the ed-
itor of this journal for considering this paper for critical review. The author is also thankful to the
respondents from Bankura district in West Bengal, India for their cooperation and support during the
field survey.

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International Journal of Population Studies | 2016, Volume 2, Issue 1 99