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Over 400 children, including 34 girls, have been rescued from the New Delhi Railway Station, according to a statement issued on Sunday. The rescue drive was organised in association with Northern Railways, SATHI, Salam Baalak Trust and Prayas JAC Society at the station with the help of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC)-Mayur Vihar, Varun Pathak of the CWC (Bench of Magistrates) said in the statement. It said 402 children -- 34 girls and 372 boys -- were rescued from the station and produced before the CWC for care and protection. They have been sent to child care institutions in the city after completion of procedures, the statement said and added that the rescued children included those missing, runaways and child labourers. Railway Protection Force Police and Government Railway Police were also involved, the statement said.
Children born to mothers who contract COVID-19 during pregnancy may be more likely to develop obesity, according to a new study. More than 100 million COVID-19 cases have been reported in the United States since 2019, and there is limited information on the long-term health effects of the infection. Pregnant women make up 9 per cent of reproductive-aged women with COVID-19, which exposes millions of babies to maternal infection during foetal development over the next five years. Our findings suggest that children exposed in utero to maternal COVID-19 have an altered growth pattern in early life that may increase their risk of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease over time, said Lindsay T Fourman, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass. There is still a lot of research needed to understand the effects of COVID-19 on pregnant women and their children, she said. The researchers studied 150 infants born to mothers who had COVID-19 during pregnancy and found the
About 43 lakh or 7.7 per cent children were found malnourished out of approximately 5.6 crore children measured by 'Poshan Tracker' in the month of February, the Ministry of Women and Child Development said on Friday. Responding to a question in Lok Sabha, Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani said Meghalaya reported the highest number of stunting at 46.5 per cent, while Puducherry recorded the lowest at 20 per cent. Maharashtra reported the highest level of wasted children at 25.6 per cent, while Chandigarh reported the minimum at 8.4 per cent, according to the data shared in a written response. Child wasting refers to a child who is too thin for his or her height and is the result of recent rapid weight loss or the failure to gain weight. A child who is moderately or severely wasted has an increased risk of death, but treatment is possible. The data also said that Bihar reported the maximum percentage of children who are underweight, while Mizoram reported the minimum
The Bombay High Court on Thursday was irked with the Maharashtra government's persistent stand that the reservation benefits given to orphans cannot be extended to abandoned children. The state should instead be working as a protective umbrella for such kids, it said. The state government offers one per cent reservation in education to orphaned children. However, it refused to extend such a benefit to children who have been abandoned by their parents as they are not orphaned as per the definition of the term. A division bench of Justices Gautam Patel and Neela Gokhale had taken up the issue after a petition was filed by a city-based NGO seeking reservation for two girls, abandoned by their parents. After being slammed by the court, the government had agreed to provide orphan certificates to the two girls so that they could seek reservation but had clarified that its stand was that there was a difference between orphaned and abandoned children. Irked with this stand, the court said
Five children died due to respiratory infection at different hospitals in Kolkata in the last 24 hours, an official said on Tuesday evening. The deaths were reported amid fears of adenovirus infection, but doctors were not sure whether these fatalities could be linked to it. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee held an emergency meeting on the evolving situation, following which the government issued a series of directives and announced a 24x7 emergency helpline -- 1800-313444-222. All paediatric acute respiratory infection (ARI) clinics will operate at the medical college and hospitals (MCHs), district hospitals and sub-divisional hospitals, among others, round the clock, the directive said. To curb the problem of patient referrals, it said that "no paediatric ARI cases shall be referred without the knowledge of the concerned MSVP/Superintendent of the hospital". It also directed the hospitals to ready ventilators and other logistics to deal with the situation. ASHA workers and other
Over 10,000 children are living on streets with their families in the country, the Women and Child Development Ministry said on Friday. Responding to a question in Lok Sabha, Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani provided data from the Bal Swaraj portal, which enumerates children living in street situations in the country. According to the data, there are 19,546 children in street situations in the country, out of which 10,401 children are living with their families on the streets, while 8,263 children stay on the streets in the day and are back home in the night with their families who reside in nearby slums. There are 882 children without support who are living on the streets all alone, the data stated.