Two-year-old Jagriti Biswas, a resident of Shahpur Colony in Dharamjaigarh, was found malnourished and underweight when anganwadi workers examined her health in June this year.
Her weight found to have significantly increased by 2.3 kilograms when she was examined six months later. It was Mamta and the State Government’s Naya Jatan schemes which helped her to fight malnourishment and live a normal healthy life. ‘Naya Jatan’ scheme has been launched by the State Government to eradicate malnutrition. The Government has also involved the industries and Non Government Organisations so that the benefit reach to all those needy.
Under this programme, Bharat Aluminium Company ltd (BAlCO) has been implementing ‘Mamta’ scheme in 268 anganwadi centres in its Taraimar coal block area in Dharamjaigarh. Jagriti’s father Gobind is an uneducated daily wager. He has three children and Jagruti is the youngest among them. Anganwadi worker Tulsi Badhai regularly visited their house and monitored Jagriti’s health. She guided them how to live in a better hygiene and eat proper nutritional food. She also provided them a chart and regularly recorded the improvement. Now Jagriti is free from malnourishment.
It is not only Jagriti, Balco has been providing nutritional supplements to 4,200 malnourished and 300 extremely malnourished children identified by the administration. It has been supplying 800 gram protein powder per month to those extremely malnourished. According to UNICEF, malnutrition is more common in India. One in every three malnourished children in the world lives in India. Malnutrition limits development and the capacity to learn. It also costs lives: about 50 per cent of all childhood deaths are attributed to malnutrition.
In India, around 46 per cent of all children below the age of three are too small for their age, 47 per cent are underweight and at least 16 per cent are wasted. Many of these children are severely malnourished. In Chhattisgarh 40 per cent children under the age of five are malnourished.