The Ernakulam district panchayat has launched a programme to identify nutritional deficiency in children based on scientific evidence and adopt corrective measures based on it.
This has been done with the help of the software “Jathak” designed along the lines of the one being used in Attappady. District Panchayat President Asha Sanil inaugurated the programme here on Saturday.
The programme was formulated after the officials of the Integrated Child Development Service noticed serious weight loss among children who were born with normal weight while examining the growth chart during their visits to anganawadis. It is for the first time a district panchayat is implementing such a programme in the State.
Twenty children were found to have serous nutritional deficiencies when the details of children from 17 grama panchayats in the district were fed into the software. The district panchayat introduced the programme on realising the importance of a scientific basis for addressing the nutritional deficiencies.