In an effort to identify nutritional status of children and detecting early growth retardation, the Kallakurichi district administration has launched a campaign to promote regular growth monitoring in children by anganwadi workers.
“The campaign, launched last month, aims at bringing down such cases and ensure that Kallakurichi district becomes free from malnutrition. The growth monitoring campaign has been rolled out in a phased manner covering those at risk of malnutrition, besides creating awareness about growth monitoring among mothers. It aims at improving the nourishment of 432 children in the pilot phase,” Collector P.N. Sridhar told The Hindu.
To begin with, the administration conducted a door-to-door enumeration of children in rural and urban areas by making use of the target data from the pulse polio vaccination, held in February. Field level functionaries from the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) centres and members of various organisations were roped in to measure the height and weight of children. About 1,24,434 children were covered, as against a target population of 1,30,902 children.
