M F AHMAD
Daltonganj, March 17: An e-newsletter, Poshan Dhara, was launched in technical cooperation with UNICEF.
Joba Majhi, the minister of the Department of Woman, Child Development, and Social Security. K.N. Jha, the department’s secretary, director Chhavi Ranjan—who, along with editor Kanchan Singh, serves as the chief editor of Poshan Dhara—and associate editors Dr Anamika and M. Nayak, both from UNICEF, attended the launching ceremony on Wednesday in Ranchi.
The bilingual e-newsletter Poshan Dhara has more material in Hindi. The first edition of Poshan Dhara paid tribute to those who sacrificed their lives during the Covid-19 for a fight against malnutrition. Poshan Dhara published, ‘A Tribute to Covid-19 warriors. The six warriors included the lady supervisor, sewika, assistant and Poshan Sakhi.
K N Jha, the department’s secretary, looks after the security issues faced by women and children. He mentioned that the state government is concerned about mothers who had anaemia and children under the age of five who were underweight.
Director Chhavi Ranjan, the chief editor of Poshan Dhara, stated that 22% of children under the age of 5 are weak, and 40% of them are underweight. Furthermore, 57% of pregnant women are anaemic, children age 1 to 9 have vitamin A deficiency, and women in the age range of 15 to 49 suffer from the impact of chronic malnutrition.
The editor of the e-newsletter, Kanchan Singh, in her editorial note expressed her wish that Poshan Dhara reaches isolated regions as well, where digitalization has begun to take hold.
Further her note also brought some relief as she mentioned the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), indicating Jharkhand’s progress in lowering the malaise with children under the age of five.
As per the NFHS 4, 45.3% of children under the age of 5 had stunted growth, whereas the NFHS 5 in Jharkhand reported that the rate reduced to 39.6%. Similar results were obtained for underweight children in NFHS 4, 47.8%, which decreased to 39.4% in NFHS 5 in Jharkhand. In the most recent NFHS 5 in Jharkhand, there has been a sharp decline in the proportion of children under the age of 5 with wasting height, going from 29% to 22.4%.
Amit Kumar, a resident of Daltonganj, said after reading a copy of Poshan Dhara that it is not propaganda but rather shows how the state government is working to end the cycle of malnutrition. The e-newsletter Poshan Dhara publishes raw and unreported stories about anonymous people who are gradually recovering from the mesh of malnutrition.
According to Ms Archana Sinha, CDPO Daltonganj, a child named Ayush overcame his severe underweight issue at the Malnutrition Treatment Centre. Furthermore, a poor pregnant mother in need of help was assisted by the Pradhan Mantri Matritwa Vandana Yojna, according to a story by Rewarani CDPO Sahebganj.
