With health increasingly important to economic progress, this is the third of a six-part series that uses the latest available data to discuss the state of health and nutrition in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand.
Punjab faces a double burden of obesity and poor nutrition. Obesity among men (27.8%) and women (31.3%) increased by 5.6 and 1.4 percentage points, respectively, in the decade to 2015, putting more Punjabis than ever at risk of different non-communicable diseases, a situation–as we shall see–the state’s healthcare system appears unprepared to deal with. Simultaneously, the proportion of anaemic men doubled between 2005 (13.6%) and 2015 (25.9%), and anaemic women went up from 38% to 53.5%.
