Children's health in the district gets a boost!!

MYSORE: Mysore ZP's measures to boost children's health - by spending Rs 11.54 crore -- have shown positive results in the district.

To ensure nutritious food to children in the district, the ZP had been providing them green sprouts, kadle kayi husli, groundnut and jaggery, milk and boiled egg. This apart, pregnant women and nursing mothers coming under the jurisdiction of anganwadis are also being provided with 0.5kg of tur dal. When the scheme was started seven months ago, there were 1,647 malnourished children in anganwadi centres, while their number has now come down to 1,510.

N R Vijay, deputy director of women and child welfare department, said: "For 1,510 malnourished children, boiled egg is given for four days and milk for six days in a week. We want to bring down the number of malnourished children."

The initiative to supplement children's diet with boiled egg or milk was started in October in last year. A special health check-up camp for malnourished children is also conducted every month. The weight of each child is checked on the fifth of every month.

Speaking about the outcome of the ZP initiative, Kalavathi, teacher at Kukkaralli anganwadi centre, said: "Children have become healthy, and have gained weight. Even the number of admissions to our centre has increased."

By December 2012, around 1.93 lakh people were benefitted. The programme aims at providing nutritious food to children and pregnant women through 2,658 centres and 169 mini-anganwadi centres in the district.

Nagaratna Ravishankar, mother of two-and-a-half-year-old Darshan R, said that she is seeing an improvement in him. "It is essential to provide nutritious food to them at this age. I'm happy that my child is getting it daily".

Under 'Bala Sanjeevini' scheme of the department, each child is entitled for Rs 35,000 for treatment and surgery