To create awareness about diarrhoea, a fortnight long campaign would be launched on June 14. For successful conduction of the campaign a meeting of state level steering committee was held at health directorate on Thursday. The meeting was attended by Additional Secretary health Dr Pankaj Kumar Pandey, Director General (DG) Health Dr D S Rawat, Mission Director National Health Mission Nitin Singh Bhadoria and other senior officers of state health, education, urban development and Panchayati Raj department.
In the campaign the parents would be informed about importance of clean drinking water, maintaining hygiene, washing of hands before and after meals and importance of regular breast feeding. In the campaign 10.29 lakh children below five years of age would be provided ORS packets and diarrhoea affected children would be provided free zinc tablets.
The NHM has provided 11.50 lakh ORS packets and 6.32 lakh Zinc tablets to hospitals, private hospitals and Anganbadi centres for distribution during the campaign. A total of 2178 ORS corners would be set up during the campaign and 148 mobile teams would visit sensitive and diarrhoea prone areas like slums.
It is worth mentioning here that diarrhoea is cause of death of 10 percent children below five years of age.