Malnutrition and hunger are demons that have been plaguing individuals for long, silently posing threats to human development. India has shown tremendous growth in key sectors of development. Nevertheless, 5.7 million children below five years of age are battling with SAM (severe acute malnutrition). To make things worse, approximately 10% of these cases require immediate hospitalization, but the hospitals and dispensaries lack proper facilities. Things are drastic in Rajasthan a state that contributes 2.9% of the total SAM cases in the country. Until 2015, 57% kids under 5 years in Rajasthan were suffering from nutritional deficiency. Over the months, the government took major steps to resolve child malnutrition in Rajasthan.
Besides empowering local Anganwadi centers with nutrition mix and organizing nutrition camps in villages, Government of Rajasthan started a nutrition program named Community-based management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) in 2016. The program was supported by an international humanitarian organization AAH (Action Against Hunger) and UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund). Rajasthan’s fight against hunger falls under National Health Mission (NHM), backed by GAIN.
With cooperation from Bestseller Foundation and CIEF (Children’s Investment Fund Foundation), Rajasthan government successfully treated 9,000 SAM cases in Rajasthan, through ‘POSHAN’ (meaning nutrition in English): a pilot community-based nutrition program. Keeping up with this success, the organizers of POSHAN arranged a technical consultation and symposium on “Management of Severe Acute Malnutrition” in the capital city Jaipur on 23rd August 2016.
Thanks to this collective effort, the government was able to exercise control on hunger up to a certain extent. To accelerate the pace of this development, recently, the state signed a tripartite MoU (Momendum of Understanding) this Saturday (June 3, 2016). The agreement involved Rajasthan’s Women and Child Development Department, Tata Trust, NHM state unit, AAH France and Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN).
The MoU was signed in the presence of NHM State Director Naveen Jain and Rajasthan Medical and Health Minister Mr. Kalicharan Saraf. Together, the state and all the associated agencies will make efforts to rescue 16,500 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition; needless to say, Rajasthan will no longer be a deprived, nutritionally deficient state in future.
