Nutritional disparities among women in urban India

The paper presents a wealth quartile analysis of the urban subset of the third round of demographic health survey of india to unmask intra-urban nutrition disparities in women. maternal thinness and moderate/ severe anaemia among women of the poorest urban quartile was 38.5% and 20% respectively and 1.5-1.8 times higher than the rest of urban population. receipt of pre- and postnatal nutrition and health education and compliance to iron folic acid tablets during pregnancy was low across all quartiles. one-fourth (24.5%) of households in the lowest urban quartile consumed salt with no iodine content,which was 2.8 times higher than rest of the urban population (8.7%). the study highlights the need to use poor-specific urban data for planning and suggests (i) routine field assessment of maternal nutritional status in outreach programmes,(ii) improving access to food subsidies,subsidized adequately-iodized salt and food supplementation programmes,(iii) identifying alternative iron supplementation methods,and (iv) institutionalizing counselling days. © international centre for diarrhoeal disease research,bangladesh.