State fights malnourishment with home care balm for kids
girl Mafia frequently suffered from diarrhoea and fever when she was around two years. The girl from Machadi village in Todabhim block of Karauli district was found malnourished during a screening. She was treated at home for malnutrition and she is normalnow.
Mafia was one of the children who were treated for malnutrition through Proactive and Optimum care of children, through Social Household Approach for Nutrition (POSHAN), a Rajasthan government initiative to take care of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition (SAM).
The state department of health and family welfare, and Unicef undertook this community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM). Accredited social health activists (ASHAs), community health workers functioning under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), and auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs), village-level female health workers, visit homes to treat malnutrition.
Mafia’s mother Sabina (26) said, “Earlier I used to frequently take Mafia to a doctor as she used to fall ill, but after ANM and ASHA sisters treated her for nutrition, she is fine; in the last year, we hardly went to a doctor.”
Asked if any special food is being given to the child, Sabina said, “Nothing special; I give her what we eat and no costly syrup or any food supplement is given to the child, so there is no extra cost. Health workers visit homes of malnourished children to check whether they are fine or have slipped back to malnutrition.”
Nitin (3) of Jaisini, around 4km from Machadi, used to also fall sick. His father Radha Kishan (25), a labourer, said, “Health workers told me that my son is malnourished. They gave him nutritional supplement and today my son is healthy. His appetite has increased and medical expenses have come down as Nitin does not fall sick frequently.”
Pushpa (28), mother of Anjana (3) from Trishul village, said, “Now my daughter is healthy and eats khichdi and roti. I was told by health workers to give a spoon of ghee or oil, which I give; I even mix palak, bathua or methi leaves in roti and give her.”
Naveen Jain, mission director of the National Health Mission, said 442 CMAM beneficiaries were selected across 13 districts in December for nutritional assessment. Of the 442 kids, 355
children were available for data collection.
“In this exercise, it was found that 89% children have maintained their normal status after 9-10 months, 7% with moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) even after the CMAM programme were undergoing treatment at anganwari centres, and 4% have relapsed to SAM,” Jain said.
“The reason for 4% slipping back to SAM was because they did not follow eating habits and failed to follow hygiene and food practices.”
Jain said, “CMAM has been boon for the malnourished children and in the next financial year, the programme will be expanded to other districts.”
Seven more districts -- Churu, Jhalawar,Bharatpur,Bikaner, Chittorgarh, Sawai Madhopur and Bhilwara -- will be included under the programme.
“A total of 16500 children — 13000 SAM children in the existing 13 districts and 3500 from new districts — will be treated for malnutrition,” Jain said.