Odisha puts ICDS staff in charge of malnourished children

BHUBANESWAR: WITH the coronavirus pandemic casting its shadow on life and livelihood of the poor and marginalized, the Odisha Government on Thursday asked ICDS functionaries to adopt children of different nutrition grades and remain accountable for their health and nutrition indicators.

Principal Secretary to Women, Child Development and Mission Shakti Department Anu Garg directed Collectors to ensure personalised care of the severely underweight kids and children suffering from malnutrition along with their effective tracking during the pandemic.

Several national and international organisations had flagged access to food as a key concern during lockdown and the Government was seized of the fact that nutrition will come under radar. Now it has fixed accountability on ICDS functionaries.

As per the plan, all CDPOs will adopt children with severe acute malnutrition, take individual responsibility and follow them up meticulously. They will get them checked at health facilities during village health sanitation and nutrition days and ensure their referral to nutrition rehabilitation centres. The officials will also follow up nutritional status of the children in the community after their discharge from rehabilitation centres.

Similarly, supervisors have been mandated with adopting children with moderate acute malnutrition and monitor their growth, consumption of diverse diet including supplementary nutrition. They will counsel the parents and care givers on feeding, water, sanitation and hygiene practices apart from following up on them on a regular basis.

Anganwadi workers will have to adopt severely underweight children in their service area and monitor their growth, diet including supplementary nutrition.

“A proper and diverse diet chart is being developed for the children under different categories and their mothers will be adequately counselled to implement it,” said an official.

The ICDS functionaries will have to share the growth monitoring data in respect of all the children diligently by 10th of every month for analysis at the district and State levels.

The District Social Welfare Officers will be accountable for ensuring that the data is timely submitted to the department.