Domestic violence is common in India. And, now a new study has revealed that it is linked to malnutrition in women and children there.Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, led by an Indian-origin Professor S V Subramanian, have found that malnutrition is associated with anaemic and other health related conditions among Indian mothers and their children.“This is strong evidence that domestic violence is linked with malnutrition among both mothers and children. In India, withholding of food is a documented form of abuse and is correlated with the perpetration of physical violence,” according to Prof Subramanian.The study population included 69,072 (aged 15-49 years) women and 14,552 children (12-35 months) from the Indian National Family Health Survey of 1998-99.The participants underwent face-to-face interviews by trained personnel, and the data collected included body measurements, blood samples, and information on women’s and child’s exposure to domestic violence in the previous year.The researchers found that women who reported more than one instance of domestic violence in the previous year had a 11 per cent increased likelihood of having anaemia and a 21 per cent increased likelihood of being underweight, as compared to women with no such history.This difference was not explained by the mother’s demographic information. The associations between domestic violence and nearly all nutritional outcomes were similar for children, the study found.According to the researchers, reducing domestic violence is clearly important from a moral and intrinsic perspective, and that this study provides a compelling case to address the problem from the perspective of health effects.“Preventing domestic violence could be just as effective as a pharmaceutical approach in combating anaemia among women.“More efforts need to be focused on the non-health aspects or social conditions that influence health conditions, and domestic violence represents one such adverse social or contextual aspect that we’ve identified in Indian society,” the ‘scienceDaily’ quoted Subramanian as saying.
