Guwahati: Assam Women and Child development department in collaboration with ITC Ltd has launched a training programme for ICDS staffers to tackle malnutrition among children in the state.
The programme launched under ITC Mission Sunehra Kal aims to mitigate child malnutrition in Assam’s eight districts- Hailakandi, Dhubri, Darrang, Barpeta, Goalpara, Udalguri, Baksa & Kamrup.
The programme was formally inaugurated at an event in Guwahati recently by Mukesh Ch Sahu, principal secretary to Assam Women and Child Development department.
The programme focuses on the prevention of malnutrition through home-based targeted counselling addressing the first 1000 days by AWWs using “Swasthya Mitra”, a digital application and counselling aids.
The ITC Limited inked a pact with Assam Women and Child Development department to demonstrate the Prevention of Malnutrition approach in the hot spot areas of malnutrition in Kamrup and Darrang districts covering 5409 Anganwadi centres and over 2,45,884 children.
The National Family Health Survey (2019-20) data for Assam indicated that about 21.7% of children under five years of age were wasted and 9.1% were severely wasted.
Over the last five years, there has been an increase in the prevalence of severe acute malnutrition from 6.2% to 9.1%.
Binoy Menon, Regional Manager, ITC Limited, Dr P. Kaliprasad, chairman, YouthInvest Foundation and Dr Maulik Shah, Health Officer, UNICEF (Northeast) were also present at the launch function.