Govt to launch campaign to map malnutrition, create awareness

New Delhi, Mar 18 (UNI) Expressing concern over the prevalence of malnutrition in the country, Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury today said her ministry will launch a nationwide campaign to create nutritional awareness in the country and map malnutrition.

She said state level nutritional reviews will be held annually and efforts will be made for district- wise mapping of high malnutritional areas.

Briefing the members of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee attached to her Ministry here, Ms Chowdhury said her Ministry has proposed nutritional education as part of school curriculum, inclusion of core module on nutrition in the induction training programmes of all the Government officers including Indian Administrative Services.

Ms Chowdhury said breast-feeding should be recognized as food security for infants and education on the same should be considered a priority programme like immunization in both health and nutrition sectors.

Expressing concern over high prevalence of malnutrition among women and children, the minister said the Government is working on a multi-sectoral approach for its prevention and control. Nutritional awareness in the rural and urban slums would be created through the field units of Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) by using local dialects and regional languages. Capacity building and programmes would be run for village workers, Panchayat members and Anganwadi workers.

The Ministry was also recasting the ICDS programme and nutrition counseling to take care of supplementary nutrition of children and lactating mothers and now Anganwadi would be sanctioned on demand, she said.

Participating in the meeting, Members of Parliament stressed the need of continuous monitoring of ICDS and other Government programmes related with nutritional support and health. They said district level officers should be made responsible to check incidents of malnutrition in their areas.

Members who participated in the meeting included Priya Dutt, Viplov Thakur, Supriya Sule, Sriniwas D Patil, Laxminarayan Sharma, C K Chandrappan, P Satheedevi and S I Shervani.

UNI AJ AKJ AS1559