The Growth and Nutritional status of Yanadis in A.P,India

Growth and nutritional studies are valuable as they provide virtuous knowledge on the health status of ethnic groups.The wide spread poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, absence of safe drinking water and sanitary living conditions, poor maternal and child health services, ineffective coverage of national health and nutritional services, have been traced as significant contributing factors for gloomy health conditions prevailing among these vulnerable population. Such a large vulnerable population in our country is of great concern in view of the extraneous social pressures and their impact on their health conditions. The Indian government as well as state governments have earmarked priority areas of research on tribes to get knowledge in the aspects of growth and nutritional status and ecological conditions of the tribal populations. In Andhra pradesh there are 33 tribal groups living in divergent ecological settings. For the present study, Yanadi,the second largest tribal group with dark-skinned,platyrrhine,below medium stature,longheaded,broad facial profile with a short chin, broad and short nasal features are inhabiting in the Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh is considered.