Project launched to fight malnutrition in Odisha’s Malkangiri villages
Bureau,Odishabarta
The project, which will cover 8000 households under 8 GPs of Podia block in Odisha’s Malkangiri district, aims to provide essential preventive medicine to the community through the trained village-based Swasthya Sathi (health worker).
Bhubaneswar:To improve nutrition and health status and to bridge gaps in access to healthcare among primitive tribes of Odisha’s Malkangiri district, non-profit Atmashakti Trust and its ally Shramajeebee Sangathan have launched a Malnutrition free village project in its Podia block.
The project, which will cover 8000 households of Podia block in Odisha’s Malkangiri district, aims to provide essential preventive medicine to the community through the trained village-based Swasthya Sathi (health worker).
“Our focus would be awareness building, strengthening local healthcare institutions, disease prevention, bringing behavioural changes among communities, promoting backyard kitchen gardens in project villages and linking them with the nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive government schemes through village health committees and form health-kits in project villages”, says Shanti Beka, Podia Block President, Mahila Shramajeebee Sangathan, Malkangiri, who also attended the launching event.
Over the last few years, the Odisha government has made stirring jumps in improving health and nutrition indicators. Odisha is also the first Indian state to have a specific nutrition budget in the country.
Between NFHS-3 (2005-06) and NFHS-4 (2015-16), the share of malnourished children under the age group of 5 in the state declined to 34.4% from 40.7%. However, there exists an intra-district disparity. Malnutrition is as high as 51.8% in Malkangiri despite it being feted as an aspirational district, a ranking made by Niti Ayog and UNDP based on the change in net resilience from March 2018 to March 2020. The Annual Health Survey report 2014 also reveals that 7 out of 10 children in Malkangiri are underweight.
“Poor and improper dietary habits, social norms, perceived practices and lack of road infrastructure have been the potential barriers to fight malnutrition. The health infrastructure in the district is also woefully inadequate. Therefore, we started this much-needed intervention which is a cost-effective and community-owned healthcare model with a focus on integrated behaviour change communication”, says Ms Ruchi Kashyap, Executive Trustee, Atmashakti Trust.
The Malnutrition-free village project started at four blocks of Kandhamal in 2014 and has helped 181 villages of over 21,000 villagers.
