Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury said on Tuesday that her Ministry would launch a nationwide campaign on nutritional awareness soon.
New Delhi, Mar 18 : Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury said on Tuesday that her Ministry would launch a nationwide campaign on nutritional awareness soon.
State level nutritional reviews will be held annually and efforts will be made for District- wise mapping of high malnutritional areas, she added.
Briefing members of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee attached to her Ministry, Chowdhury said that her Ministry has proposed nutritional education as a part of the school curriculum, the inclusion of a core module on nutrition in the induction training programmes of all Government officers, including Indian Administrative Services (IAS).
She also emphasised that breast-feeding should be recognised as food security for infants and breast-feeding education should be considered a priority programme like immunization in both health and nutrition sectors.
Chowdhury also expressed concern over the prevalence of malnutrition, especially among women and children. She said the Government is working on a multi-sectoral approach for its prevention and control.
Nutritional awareness in the rural and urban slums would be created through the field units of Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) by using local dialects and regional languages. Capacity building and programmes would be run for village workers, Panchayat members and Anganwadi workers, she added.
The Ministry was also recasting the Integrated Child Development Programme and nutrition counselling to take care of supplementary nutrition of children and lactating mothers and now Anganwadi would be sanctioned on demand, she said.
Members of Parliament (MP) who were also participating in the meeting stressed the need of continuous monitoring of ICDS and other Government's programmes related with nutritional support and health.
They said that District level officers should be made responsible to check incidents of malnutrition in their areas. Member participated in the meeting include: Priya Dutt, Viplov Thakur, Supriya Sule, Sriniwas D. Patil, Laxminarayan Sharma, C.K. Chandrappan, P. Satheedevi and S.I. Shervani.
ANI