Ignou to enhance skills of Odisha health workers

BHUBANESWAR: The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) will offer six-month course to accredited social health activist (ASHA) workers of 10 districts in the state to enhance their knowledge about food, nutrition and guidance.
National Health Mission (NHM) is sponsoring the programme for the health workers. Ignou has already received over 5,200 applications from these village-level health workers. Last date to apply for the course is August 14.
Santosh Kumar Panigrahy, assistant regional director of Ignou's Bhubaneswar region, said two certificate courses will be offered to the ASHA workers.These are certificate in food and nutrition (CFN) and certificate in guidance (CIG). The health workers will opt one of the two subjects.
The health workers will be taught about the nutrients contained in different items of food, needs of the human body in terms of various nutrients at different stages of life and consequences of taking more or wrong types of food. It will also discuss on ways of selecting food articles, the techniques for processing, cooking and preserving them.
CIG course caters to the needs of teachers, parents, social worker and others interested in guiding children aged between five to 11 years for their better learning and socio-emotional development. This is an awareness level programme that focuses on their overall development.
"We have received willingness of 6,553 health workers from 10 districts to enroll for the courses. These district are- Balasore, Angul, Mayurbhanj, Ganjam, Khurda, Kendrapada, Sambalpur, Cuttack, Jajpur and Kandhamal," he added.
He said the courses will be offered in July-December session. The course fee is Rs 1600 per each health worker. NHM has invested around Rs 1 crore to sponsor the admission fee.
Odisha has more than 47,000 ASHA workers. "Some of them have no formal education, so the Ignou has not taken educational qualification as criteria for the course. Odia will be the medium of teaching and course materials," said Panigrahy.
"If more ASHA workers show interest for enrolment, we will offer them these courses. We are also planning to add more courses in future for this programme," said the assistant regional director.