Fight against malnutrition in rural Gujarat: DDO Ahmedabad shares his experience

A video made for Nutrition Mission

By our correspondent, Ahmedabad, 12 March 2013

“If you ask one remedy of the problem of malnutrition, I would say it is the awareness in parents,” said Ahmedabad’s District Development Officer Banchhanidhi Pani today.

When asked what is responsible for malnutrition – poverty, or lack of awareness, he replied “both, but lack of awareness is still the main reason.”

He said there are instances where children are found malnourished even in higher income groups, and that shows lack of awareness in general.

Pani was meeting media persons today in Ahmedabad to share details of district panchayat’s special initiative ‘Nutrition Mission’ which has recently won national award.

Nutrition Mission project was implemented in rural Ahmedabad district during September 2011 to July 2012, on a scale so big that it covered 1,44,772 children of 0-6 age group.

“The objective was to identify malnourished children(0-6 years), to improve their nutritional status, to identify and treat their medical ailments, to provide health education and counsel the parents regarding importance of nutrition, and to increase the awareness in general population towards nutrition,” Pani said.

Government machinery and funding was just not enough to do the mammoth task of checking around 1.5 lakh children, and identifying those among them who need improvement. Therefore the District Panchayat choose community participation route, and received contribution from private agencies like Tata Nano, Cairn India and Rajalakshmi Logistics Ltd, social service trusts like Ujamba Trust, Uttam Dairy, APMC Dascroi, and even govt employees and leaders of communities.

“It was implemented as a people’s programme,” Pani said.

A special ‘Team Nutrition’ comprising of officers of different departments was formed under the chairmanship of the District Development Officer, District Panchayat, Ahmedabad. The principal implementation was done by Health Branch and ICDS(Integrated Child Development Service) Branch. A workshop was organized in presence of well-known nutrition experts for making out the policy regarding how to carry out the mission. The topic was discussed in detail and the framework was made up. A special module was developed regarding nutrition subject and how to implement the project. A special training (ToT) was organized in which all the Taluka level officers of health and ICDS department were trained about nutrition and nutrition mission by the experts of nutrition field. First officers were trained, the all the female health workers, ASHAs and Anganwadi workers(around 3000) were trained at Block level to sensitize them how to carey out the mission.

After properly trained and sensitized, these workers carried out a special survey covering 1,44,772 children(0-6 years). All those children were weighed with a special customized digital electronic weighing machine, by which stages of malnourishment can be easily identified by field staff and parents of children. It was for the 1st time in Gujarat, that such special customized electronic baby weighing machines were used for weighing the children. Such machines are made available at 310 anganwadi centers throughout the district. Cost of it has been contributed by a private agency.

Out of 1,44,772 children of 0-6 years age group weighed in a special scale, 3,773 were identified as severely malnourished children. 3157 children with medical problems were also identified and treated by medical officers. 377 children were given secondary care by the specialist doctors at special camps.

Out of 1,44,772 surveyed children, 3773 severely malnourished children were provided a ‘special nutritious diet’ as per a special diet plan(feeding high calorie food 5 times a day for continuous 15 days) at Anganwadi centres itself.

The results were encouraging. A number of severely malnourished children came down to half, medium level cases of malnourished children were significantly down from 46,000 earlier to 30,000 at the end of the project according to Pani.

Continuous follow up of these children were also been carried out for 2 months(on 15th, 30th, 45th, and 60th day) by health workers for nutritional requirements as well as health status monitoring.Simultaneously, the parents-guardians of these children were educated and counseled regarding importance of nutrition and nutritious food.

“The third party evaluation of whole project was done by well-known – Indian Institute of Public Health, Gandhinagar,” Pani sid adding that a special website ‘Matra’ (Malnutrition Tracking) is launched for the continuous monitoring of the project.

To make this project and its success replicable, a special documentary film has been prepared which includes the different stages of the Nutrition Mission. The video has been shared on Youtube and it is presented above.

To make the achievements sustainable, the parents of targeted children were convinced that they would now continuously keep watch over the nutritional status of their children to prevent future complications.

We asked Pani the reasons of malnourishment and infant mortality that have been identified during the project period. He replied, “there’s different reason for each type of malnutrition, but general reasons are; lack of awareness about importance of breast feeding, lack of care in the cases of diaria, absence of protection against warms, lesser number of food intakes throughout the day, and the types of food fed to children.”

Pani said that awareness and attention at every level and every layer is important, and Government alone can not fight and win against malnutrition.

Project plan, and results:

File video of Ahmedabad DDO’s announcement on Nutrition Mission (April 2012):

CM congratulates Ahmedabad district panchayat for bagging national award for fight against malnutrition

The Chief Minister Narendra Modi has congratulated the Ahmedabad district panchayat for bagging a national award of QCI-DLSHAH Trurst for achieving excellent results in the battle against malnutrition with people’s participation.

District development officer of Ahmedabad district panchayat Banchhanidhi Pani presented this award before the Chief Minister. The award was given to the Ahmedabad district panchayat on March 08 for achieving excellent results in fighting malnutrition under Gujarat Nutrition Mission.

Ahmedabad district panchayat formed a trained team for implementing the campaign against malnutrition in rural areas. A case study of the achievements of the campaign was also carried out.