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The Dastak Abhiyan has been
launched for mass expansion of health and nutrition services in view of the
major causes of child mortality rate in the state. This campaign is being
implemented in the whole state with the support of Health and Women and
Child Development Department. Under this campaign, a joint team of ASHA, NNM
and anganwadi workers will visit families with children under 5 years on
July 31.
The aim
of the Dastak Abhiyan is quick
management through active identification of major disorders in children
below the age of five at the community level, thereby reducing the desired
reduction in child mortality rate. Special emphasis has been given on
evolution based strategy for the extension of health and nutrition services
by the government. According to SRS-2016, the death rate among children
below five years in the state is 55 per 1000 live births. The main reasons
behind these are child diarrhea, pneumonia besides underlying causes like
malnutrition and anaemia.
It is noteworthy that 68.9 percent of children in
the state are anaemic and 9.2 percent of the children are severely
malnourished. It is possible to reduce the child mortality rate by
approximately 22 percent by adequate breastfeeding. Despite 81 percent of
women taking advantage of institutional delivery in the state, only 35
percent newborn babies get the benefit of the mother’s first thick yellow
milk.
Among the main activities
of the campaign are management and referral after identiying sick newborns
and children, management and referral after prompt identification of infant
and child pneumonia, advise on ORS and zinc related information and
providing ORS in every house to control child diarrhoea, referral and
management after active identification of seriously malnourished children,
active screening and management of severe anaemia in children up in the age
group of 6 months to 5 years, identification of congenital malformation in
children, vitamin-A supplements to all children between nine months to 5
years, taking information of immunisation status of children and part-immunisation
during meeting at home, promotion of infant and child feeding behaviour,
screening of sickness and
follow-up of sick children discharged from SNCU and NRC and collecting
information of child deaths in the last 6 months.
The Dastak team will identify children suffering
from severe malnutrition, severe illness, severe anaemia, diarrhoea and
pneumonia by making community access to all 5-year-old children of the
state. In addition, they will also advise people on promoting infant and
child feeding practices, hand washing, demonstration to teach method of
making ORS and care of underweight children. During the campaign sick
children will be treated besides management of severely malnourished
children, blood transfusion in severely anaemic children and prevention of
diarrhea and pneumonia will also be undertaken. For this, Dastak monitoring
tool has been developed by the department.
So far 1 crore 2 lakh 55 thousand 435 children
have undergone active screening in the first phase of Dastak Abhiyan
2018-19. During the last phase of the campaign, 63.40 lakh children were
screened, out of which 8 thousand 883 severely malnourished children with
medical complications were treated after being admitted in the Nutrition
Rehabilitation Centre. As many as 1206 children with severe anaemia were
given blood transfusion, 1213 children suffering from severe pneumonia and
1412 children suffering from diarrhea were treated. During the campaign, at
least 53.66 lakh children in the age group of 9 months to 5 years were
administered Vitamin-A dose. Families of 25.58 lakh children were advised on
infant and child nutrition, hand washing, diarrhoea management etc. |
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