The Women and Child Development Department will organise a year-long information, education, and communication (IEC) campaign to raise awareness of anaemia.
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The campaign has been included in the Chief Minister’s 10-point programme to combat anaemia among children. Expected to start this month, it will concentrate on children in the 10-18 age group and their parents.
Special focus
Special focus will be on children whose haemoglobin level is below 10. In the case of children in the 10-13 age group, the intervention will target their parents, while in the case of the 14-18 age group, a lot of the focus will be on the children themselves.
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Awareness creation among parents, awareness and training for school counsellors and teachers and anganwadi teachers, targeted intervention at children who have been found to be anaemic by the National Health Mission, and poster campaigns are some of the programmes planned as part of the IEC campaign.
A ‘lunchbox’ competition, in which parents and the public can send in breakfast, noon meal, and evening snack recipe combo, is also under consideration.
Posters will be put up on notice boards and other display spaces at government offices and schools across the State at the same time on the same day as part of the poster campaign.
Monthly programmes, including activities and trainings, targeted at anganwadi teachers, school counsellors and teachers, parents, and so on will also be held.
NHFS-5 results
The results of the fifth National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5 2019-20) have heightened the importance of the campaign.
As per the survey, the percentage of children in the 6-59 months age category who are anaemic in the State increased from 35.7 in the fourth NFHS (2015-16) to 39.4 in the fifth NHFS.
The percentage of men in the 15-19 age group who are anaemic also increased from 14.3 to 27.4 while that for women in the same age group fell from 37.8 in NFHS-4 to 32.5 in NFHS-5.