Pregnant women in remote areas are mostly reluctant to visit Anganwadi Centres to collect supplementary food
In order to ensure proper nutrition for pregnant women, the state government has planned to give them supplementary nutrition under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme on a monthly basis, instead of the current practice of giving it every week. For the purpose, a pilot project has been launched in Banswara district on October 5.
It is worth mentioning that it was found during separate investigations by ICDS and health department, done after more than 90 deaths of newborns with low birth weight in Banswara District Hospital was recorded in the months of August-September, that pregnant women in remote areas are mostly reluctant to visit Anganwadi Centres to collect supplementary food.
“We are daily wage labourers and I with my husband Mukesh have to work daily to feed our five-member family,”Vesti, a 22-year-old from Surpur village in Ghatol Tahsil of Banswara said. Vesti is one of the mothers who lost her newborn a couple of months ago. “Our earning went down to half as being a pregnant I was unable to go on work. At that time taking my husband with me to Anganwadi centre would have made him miss on a day’s work leading to complete loss of a day’s wage, which we could not afford,” she explained her reason for not going to Anganwadi centre to collect supplementary food.
ICDS Scheme of Ministry of Women and Child Development is one of the flagship programmes of the Government of India and represents one of the world’s largest and unique programmes for early childhood care and development. Under the scheme, once in a week pregnant women, lactating mothers and 6-36 month-old kids are given a free of cost packet of supplementary nutrition at Aganwadi centres.
This ready to eat food contains sugar, edible oil and dry mixture of wheat, chana dal and soya bean flour. The pregnant women, lactating mothers and adolescent girls get a pack of 950 grams and the children get 750 gm of the supplementary nutrition every week. Now, in Banswara four packets are being given to pregnant women once in four weeks.
“The motive behind giving four packets at one go is to cut their visits to Anganwadi centres,” Suchi Sharma, director, ICDS told DNA. “Being from a poor family and a daily labourer, most of them are used to be least interested in visiting Anganwadi centres to collect supplementary nutrition. We have started it at 1,979 centers in Banswara district and it will be implemented in more than 61,000 Anganwadi centres across the state if the pilot is successful,” she added.
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