The district administration, under a special campaign, will organise ‘Baal Arogya Diwas’ (child health day) on August 8 to eradicate malnutrition in the district.

In this new initiative of the district administration, Anthelmintic drugs will be administered to VIII to XII class students of all schools.At the time-bound meeting, Collector KC Devsenapati said that under the weekly iron and folic acid supplement programme, iron and folic acid tablets have been supplied to the students on a particular day in the week.

Under this programme, Anti-parasitic worm drugs were being given to them in August and February. Now, a special programme will be conducted for it.

He said that on August 8,  this programme would be implemented by constituting a special team and Anthelmintic drugs will be administered. On this day, under the ‘National Child Health Security Programme’, health check-up programme will be started. Two teams, comprising two doctors, one pharmacist and one ANM in each team, will be formed for it.

The teams will do health check-up of children at schools and Anganwadis. Each team has been given a target of health check-up of 150 children per day.A special rally will be taken out on August 8, in which prevention of diarrhoea and the measures to be taken and the methods of taking medicines like ORS and Zinc etc will be informed. Children will be imparted training about the method of washing hands.

Senapati said that through coordinated efforts, special initiative has been taken to free the district of malnutrition. In the meeting, the collector instructed the health department to make all preparations to deal with epidemics during monsoon and to store sufficient quantity of medicines.