The Department for Women, Children, Disabled and Senior Citizens (DWCD) will soon have a project monitoring unit (PMU) to monitor the data of children, pregnant and lactating mothers served by the Anganwadi centres across the State.
The DWCD has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Aga Khan Foundation which has agreed to support the PMU. Currently, the department’s internal IT Cell is digitising the data uploaded by Anganwadi supervisors.
Teachers roped in
Apart from those who come to Anganwadi centres, the Anganwadi teachers will also visit families under each centre’s jurisdiction - catering to about 1,000 population - under the ‘ Intintiki Anganwadi’ (house-to-house anganwadi) programme to explain the importance of nutritious food to every family member.
The teachers visit five to six families each day and gather information about their food habits, nutritional value of their food intake, give suggestions to improve nutritional value in their diet, etc.
“The idea is to impress upon the families about the close link between nutrition and health,” explained M. Jagadeeshwar, Principal Secretary, DWCD.
They also talk about immunisation, direct the families to ASHA workers of the health department or to the health centre.
“This effort is in addition to the services extended by the 35,700 centres across the State under 149 Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) projects. The ICDS projects have a 75,000-strong workforce to deliver the services to women and children,” he added.
Crucial period
The first 1,000 days, or three years are the golden period in the development cycle of a child and crucial time to extend care for health and nutrition.
While children aged three to six years visit pre-school at Anganwadi centres and their nutritional supplement was taken care of by the centres, for children below three years, the nutrition supplement ‘ Balamrutham ’ is served at the doorstep of the child and the weight, immunisation schedules are recorded and monitored.
Under the first phase, 11,000 Anganwadi supervisors were given smart phones to record and upload health data of women and children. The remaining centres will be covered in the second and third phases and data would be collected in three to four months.
Final stage
Once all the phases were completed, the data could be accessed at the dashboard such as data of women availing services, date of delivery, institution where the child was delivered, initiation of breast feeding, etc., and other care services.
It would also allow the department to monitor the quality as also the timely delivery of services at the state-level.
