With special diet, Gadchiroli’s severe malnourishment cases dip 50% in just 5 months

Nagpur: Barely five months into a unique campaign to eliminate child malnutrition in Gadchiroli district, results from the latest survey have astounded everyone. Under the Gadchiroli Vishesh Aahaar (Gadchiroli Special Diet) campaign, there has seen a reduction of 50% in the Severe Acute Malnourishment (SAM) category, and strong progress in others too (SEE TABLE).
Officials noticed that the problem was basically of children not getting proper nutrition due to abject poverty.“Energy-dense nutrition packets were being supplied to parents, so that they can feed it to their children,” said Gadchiroli ZP CEO Kumar Ashirwad and added, “It’s like a sweet powder that has to be mixed with water, and has sufficient quantity of proteins in it. But kids were not regular in taking it, mothers too would not force and that’s why kids’ health got affected.”
That’s when it was decided that a special diet has to be implemented for these children, with food being served to them at least five days every week. The menu and nutrition value were worked out and approved by the competent authority.
Rubal Agarwal, commissioner of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), said, “While we cleared the technical aspect of it, what was remarkable is that at the local level all different authorities worked together. This is what we really mean by convergence at the ground level.”
The ‘convergence’ was that ZP designed the campaign, ICDS customized it for the local populace, anganwadi sevikas agreed to the extra workload for sake of children and gram panchayats shelled out the funds.
The campaign kicked off on October 2, when local authorities assessed health status of around 10,000 kids. Now, these children recieve the special diet, freshly cooked by anganwadi sevikas and sourced from local vendors only. Ashirwad said, “It is highly commendable that all of the stakeholders have put in their top efforts to make this campaign a success.”
TABLE:
Gadchiroli Vishesh Aahar campaign
Category of Children ———————————Oct 2, 2021 —————Feb 28, 2022
Severe Acute Malnourishment (SAM)——————- 1,017 ——-————— 504
Moderate Acute Malnourishment (MAM)—————- 6,097 ———————-4,310
Severly under weight (SUW)——————————-2,930———————-2,118