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Puducherry government gears up for ‘nutrition week' from September 1

PUDUCHERRY: With the first week of September being celebrated as ‘nutrition week,' the Department of Women and Child Development is gearing up to organise various events to sensitise the public to malnutrition and government schemes to help prevent it.

On September 1, a workshop and seminar on malnutrition will be organised at the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) with officials from Tamil Nadu and experts in the field of nutrition participating.

Recipe competition

On the September 2, a nutrition recipe competition will be held at the department premises for mothers, teachers and adolescent girls.

In Puducherry, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme that functions under the department supports more than 27,000 children and 8,364 pregnant and lactating mothers through 788 anganwadis across the Union Territory. The scheme provides supplementary nutrition, health check-ups, nutrition and health education and pre-school and non-formal education.

A total of Rs 7.05 crore has been allocated partly by the territorial government and partly by Centre as funds for the ICDS for the year 2010-11.

According to the Programme officer Gandhimathi, Puducherry is one of the very few places where the problem of severe mal-nutrition has been abolished.

s per June 2010 data, the Union Territory does not have even a single Severely Mal-Nourished Child (SMC). There are 1345 children with Grade II mal-nourishment and 9345 Grade I mal-nourished children in the UT.

ICDS made universal

The officer said that the success rate with regards to the SMC's is due to the fact that the ICDS which covered only Below Poverty Line (BPL) families has now been made universal.

The scheme provides 300 days of diet for the children and the mothers every year. The unit cost per day for the mother is Rs 7.80 and for the child it is Rs 4.84.

One of the subjects the department wishes to deliberate upon during the nutrition week is the formulation and implementation of a ‘Nutrition Policy' in the Union Territory.

According to Gandhimathi, a nutrition policy is vital in enhancing the efforts to reduce all kinds of mal-nourishment and that states that have implemented such a policy have shown marked improvement in mal-nutrition figures over the years.

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