This story is from June 25, 2019

Encephalitis outbreak: Bihar government rolls up sleeves to fight malnutrition

With acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) claiming lives of 152 children in the state so far and many blaming malnutrition and poverty for the deaths, the state social welfare department is set to give a big push as far as implementation of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme is concerned.
Encephalitis outbreak: Bihar government rolls up sleeves to fight malnutrition
Bihar social welfare department is set to give a big push as far as implementation of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme is concerned (Photo: AFP)
PATNA: With acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) claiming lives of 152 children in the state so far and many blaming malnutrition and poverty for the deaths, the state social welfare department is set to give a big push as far as implementation of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme is concerned.
The ICDS scheme, world’s largest community-based programme, is targeted at children up to the age of six years as well as pregnant and lactating women.
The scheme is aimed at improving the health, nutrition and education of the target community. These services are provided through community-based anganwadi centres. However, people in AES-hit Muzaffarpur and other neighbouring districts alleged that the anganwadi centres function for not more than 10-15 days a month.
Under the Centre’s ‘Poshan Abhiyan’, the state government will rope in block level coordinators and project assistants for real-time monitoring of various activities of anganwadi centres with the help of common application software (CAS).
Each centre will get a cellphone and anganwadi workers will be required to upload their daily activities to the application instead of maintaining registers. The cellphones will be geo-tagged. Hence, the location of anganwadi centres cannot be changed. The new system will make it easier to find out whether the anganwadi centres are open or not.
An official at ICDS directorate told TOI that CAS has already been introduced in anganwadi centres in six districts – Samastipur, Sitamarhi, Buxar, Lakhisarai, Jehanabad and Bhagalpur.
“Training of anganwadi workers in 11 more districts, including Muzaffarpur, is underway. The Centre has targeted to cover all the districts by the end of this financial year (2019-20),” the ICDS official added.
Poshan Abhiyan, a central government scheme, was launched by PM Narendra Modi in March last year to eradicate stunting and malnourishment in children and to get rid of anaemia in girls and women.

State’s ICDS directorate will rope in 544 coordinators, one in each block, to provide technical support to 544 project assistants, who will monitor the work of anganwadi workers and supervisors.
“Through the app, we will also check the growth of a child as there is a module where weight and height has to be mentioned along with the age,” the official added.
Anganwadi workers will have to upload the photos of meal they serve at their respective centres to the software every day. “This will also reduce paperwork at the anganwadi centres,” the official said.
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