The Government has been spending crores of rupees every year to educate and create awareness on providing primary education to children between the age of 6 to 14 under SSA and to eradicate the social stigmas of child marriage and also to make aware the gullible illiterate women on pregnancy spacing, but it seems it has no effect at the coastal hamlets of lunimathia, Sabarapada and Jungalighery. Here, one can find child marriage and no pregnancy spacing is maintained.
According to sources, early age marriage has become a day-to-day affair in the inaccessible pockets of lunimathia, Sabarapada and Jungalighery villages under Mahakalpada block.
Most of the children between the age group of 6-14 in the villages do not go to school due to lack of communication facilities and unavailability of school nearby. In the three villages, where 150 tribal families have been residing, only a youth, Ramesh Bhakta, is matriculate.
Sabarpada village hogged the headline recently for the malnutrition death of a two-and-a-half-year old. The number of children in 0 to 6 years of age is 58.As many as 8 families with a population of the 405, including 195 male members, reside in the village. Here most of the women, who got married at an early age, are yet to attain 18 years. But, most of them become the mother of three to four children.
To the surprise, the pregnancy spacing is not maintained due to illiteracy, alleged the intellectual masses.
Here, the norms for marriage are thrown to the wind and the child marriage has been going on every now and then under the very nose of the district administration and police. If a mother is under the age of 18, her infant’s risk of dying in its first year of life is 60 per cent. Even if the child survives, he or she is more likely to suffer from low birth weight, under nutrition and late physical and cognitive development.
In addition, a pregnancy within 18 months of giving birth is associated with an increased risk of low birth weight, small size for gestational age and preterm birth. Closely spaced pregnancies don't give a mother enough time to recover from the physical stress of one pregnancy before moving on to the next, stated CDMO Dr Niranjan Swain.
Intellectual masses alleged that no such awareness programmes or interventions have been taken up by the Government to stop child marriage in the locality. As a result, the girls between the age group of 14 to 16 are getting married. And, by the time they attain 40 years, they become
grandmothers.
While the National Health Mission has been spending crores of rupees to ensure birth control and make people aware of minimum space pregnancy duration, but nothing has been made to create awareness in these tribal pockets.