Centre postpones 'healthy boy-girl contest', asks states to observe ‘Poshan Pakhwa
The Centre has postponed the earlier scheduled week-long event ‘Healthy boy-girl contest’ to start from March 21 (Monday) and directed the states to instead begin a two-week-long campaign ‘Poshan Pakhwada' on nutritional challenges, a senior official said.
Poshan Pakhwada this year will be rolled out from March 21 to April 4 with the key focus on creating awareness on community-based activities, gender sensitisation, prevention of anaemia, encouraging traditional food for securing healthy mothers and children in the scheduled tribe areas.
To ensure wider people’s participation all the district collectors and the district project officers of the women & child development department have been asked to seek support from the other departments, local organisations and people’s representatives, panchayats, self-help groups, farmers’ groups, youth clubs to achieve the desired goals of 'Poshan Abhiyan'.
Ahead of the campaign, the Chhattisgarh government claimed to have achieved remarkably in the fight against malnutrition. “In the year 2019, 4.33 lakh malnourished children were identified and Mukhyamantri Suposhan Abhiyan was launched. So far, 1.72 lakh children are out of the vicious cycle of malnutrition”, CM Bhupesh Baghel said in the Assembly.
The scheme now is a target-based intervention programme, the children from 6 to 54 months were considered as ‘earmarked’ as per the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation that the child growth standards can be effectively measured under the age of 5 years.
According to the state WCD officials, The number of malnourished children has declined by nearly 36 per cent in the state since the launch of the 'Mukhyamantri Suposhan Yojana’.
Arrangements were made to provide hot-cooked food for children under Suposhan Abhiyan, the supplementary nutritional food to the identified kids at anganwadi centre, distribute free nutritious food at local-level to the malnourished women and children.