Toys' banks set up to attract children at NRCs in MP's Barwani

Bhopal: In a bid to reduce the malnutrition, an initiative of setting up the toys' banks have been taken at Nutritional Rehabilitation Centres (NRCs) to attract severe acute malnourished children for medical and therapeutic care in the tribal district, Barwani of Madhya Pradesh.

After introducing the toys banks, the Barwani district has been bagging the first position in the state in the severe acute malnourished (SAM) children admission in the NRCs for the last three consecutive months.

According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) report, MP has the highest percentage (55, compared to the 41 per cent of the national average) of malnutrition among the children under the five years of age across the country. The NFHS-5 report for Madhya Pradesh is awaited and may be released in the upcoming April month.

Barwani has a 68 per cent tribal population and is one of the 112 districts of the country that are selected under the Aspirational District Programme scheme of the NITI Aayog.

"Setting up the Toys Banks with public participation has given us fruitful results, as the SAM children are attracting towards the NRCs and the occupancy in the centres has increased up to 250 per cent while earlier the beds used to lay vacant," Shivraj Singh Verma, collecter of Barwani told the Millennium Post. "Eradicating the malnutrition is a priority to the chief minister, so we are leaving no stone unturned to reduce it by taking several steps like close monitoring, spreading awareness etc in the tribal district," the collector added.

Apart from this, the new winter clothes, sweets, biscuits, toffees, chocolates, cakes, etc were also being provided to the children as well as their family members at the NRCs, it has created a competition among them to bring their SAM children at the centres, Verma said.

Community-based management of severe acute malnutrition (C-SAM) survey recently conducted by the state's Women and Child Development (WCD) Department stated that the 71,304 children were found with the SAM and 42,3875 were with the moderate acute malnourished (MAM) while total 89,8611 kids of the families were registered for surveys.

Meanwhile, the survey shows that compared to NFHS-4, the malnutrition burden in Madhya Pradesh has reduced.

The state government has also been giving Rs 1,000 every month to the tribal women for taking healthy food to eradicate the malnutrition since 2018. The severe acute malnutrition is more reported in the tribal children of the state.

"The toys are provided to the children during their treatment at the NRCs and at the time of discharging, various kinds of playthings are given to the kids as a gift," said Ajay Kumar Gupta, assistant director of WCD department, Barwani.

As many as 320 NRCs have been up set in the state where the severe acute malnutrition children are admitted and managed to provide medical and nutritional therapeutic care. The NRC is one of the main factors that could help to reduce the malnutrition in the children.

However, the recent report of the Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey shows that the malnutrition is increased by 14 per cent in the crises of Covid-19 across the country.