VIJAYAWADA: Women development and child welfare department is planning to initiate a special nutrition plan for tribal women and children to help them fight against anaemia and malnutrition. The department has taken this initiative in order to control sickle cell anaemia.
An integrated approach to improve the targeted group's nutritional status will be adopted by the department officials. ICDS services and health and tribal development services will be converged and implemented. Asha workers and anganwadi workers will be given training for creating awareness among the tribal women and children on nutrition, health and malnutrition, by the State Resource Group (SRG) members.
Two anganwadi workers or Asha workers from each sector will be identified for training by the district or mandal authorities after consulting the project supervisors. As part of the training, field experiences and messages that need to be conveyed to people will be discussed.
Speaking to TNIE, WDCW Commissioner H Arun Kumar said, "Though there are many initiatives aimed at improving nutrition levels of the tribal women, they are unable to show results. Therefore, we wanted to start from the basics and give training to local anganwadi and Asha workers, and then reach out to the people. This is to address the challenges that prevent initiatives such as these from reaching people and to make women and adolescent girls aware. To achieve the desired results, the department has kept four systemic areas to be facilitated, closely monitored, and reinforced in its implementation."
The training for the identified anganwadi workers and Asha workers will soon take off and a special diet will be prescribed to women and children through them for a duration of six months. We will make the required changes, if any, to the diet or extend it for more than six months.
Currently, in the agency areas of Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram, East Godavari and West Godavari districts, over 14,000 students are severely suffering with anaemia and malnutrition. Over 20,000 women in these areas are suffering with anaemia. Apart from this, a large number of people are suffering with sickle cell anaemia.