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.
Mr. Sridhar said various aspects in the nutritional status of children were found during the campaign. About 4,689 children were stunted (low height for age), 2,104 were wasted (low weight for height) and 1,407 were underweight (low weight for age), and 432 children fell in both wasted and underweight categories.
“The administration has selected these 432 children falling under Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) and Severe Underweight (SUW) categories. They will be supplied a free nutrition kit for four weeks and progress in their condition would be recorded every fortnight. This information would also be shared with their parents and they would be advised to take care of their [children’s] health to avoid malnourishment,” he added.
Official sources said the nutrition kit worked out to ₹925 per child for a month and funds to the tune of ₹5.55 lakh had been allocated from the Collector’s discretionary fund to provide extra nutrition and to alleviate malnourishment.
“We have started this as a pilot project for three months and plan to cover all children under stunting, wasting, and underweight categories to achieve the goal of [becoming] a malnutrition-free district,” Mr. Sridhar added.
