MP Pathirana numbers on malnutrition are under-nourished

The MP in his statement provides figures to establish that malnutrition in Sri Lanka has been decreasing since 2009.  

Malnutrition is defined as those who suffer from deficient or excessive nutrient intake. That is either undernutrition or overnutrition. Undernutrition is evaluated based on a person displaying any one of three characteristics defined as (1) “wasting” or (2) “stunting” or (3) “underweight” (below two standard deviations of the mean weight for age).

In Sri Lanka the Ministry of Health (MoH) provides annually, and the Department of Census and Statistics provides sporadically, statistics on the assessments of undernutrition (see Exhibit 1).

The MP correctly cites the “underweight” numbers, among children under the age of 5, as given by MoH, which is 27.4% in 2009, and 12.2% in 2021.

The MP in his statement uses the term ‘malnutrition’. However, the data he cites correctly is for children who are underweight, which is not a full count of those who suffer from undernutrition. Therefore, it is not a full count of those who suffer from malnutrition. This makes him not accurate on the numbers. 

However, the larger claim of the MP is that there is a clear reduction in the under 5 population that is malnourished. Exhibit 1 shows that in terms of overnutrition, there is a slight increase in malnutrition, but for malnutrition in terms of undernutrition, there is a large reduction in all three forms of measuring it. 

Despite the MP incorrectly equating data on the “underweight” as data on malnutrition, the larger claim of the MP is supported by trends in the overall data on malnutrition. Therefore, we classify him as PARTLY TRUE.

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