MMBSY will be helpful in providing better health care and nutritious food to children up to 6 years of age
Under the visionary leadership of Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur, the state has taken steps towards all-round development. The state government has ensured upliftment of every section of the society through various welfare schemes. The special schemes of state government have ensured security to every citizen of the state from newborn child to elderly. Mukhya Mantri Bal Suposhan Yojana (MMBSY) is one such scheme, that has proved to be a big step towards making the state free from malnutrition by providing quality nutrition to the children.
Objective of MMBSY:
The objective of the MMBSY scheme emphasises on thousand day window of child birth, pre and post delivery support to the mother and child to reduce malnutrition. This will ensure proper health care of children and avoid the problem of malnutrition.
During the year 2021-22, the Chief Minister had announced to prepare an action plan in view of the nutritional status of the children and mother in the National Family Health Survey-5, prepared by the State Government in collaboration with NITI Aayog.
Budget Provision and beneficiaries:
The state government for this scheme has made a budget provision of about 65 crores. This scheme will benefit more than four lakh children in the age group of 6 months to 6 years, more than five lakh children in the age group of 6 years to 10 years, more than three lakh adolescent girls and 94 thousand lactating mothers. Under the scheme, special attention is being paid to malnourished children, lactating mothers and pregnant women, besides providing extra protein-rich food to children below 6 years of age.
Under the scheme, options have been provided for the purchase of food items through self-help groups to empower women financially. Special campaigns like diarrhea control, pneumonia control, Anemia Mukt Himachal will be run in the state to solve the problem of malnutrition and childhood illnesses.
This scheme will benefit 14 thousand high risk low birth weight newborns, 13335 high risk pregnancies, 912 severely acute malnourished children and 5169 moderately malnourished children. Services of ASHA workers and Anganwadi workers will be taken in the implementation of the scheme. Bal Swasthya Clinics will be organized last Saturday of every month for low birth weight babies. There would be addition of vitamin-D and iron drops for low birth weight children.
Under MMBSY, lactating mothers were being encouraged for exclusive breastfeeding and starting complementary feeding, for which special incentives were also be provided to them. In case of malnourished babies with low birth weight, an incentive amount was provided to the guardian for every kilogram of weight increase in case of severely acute malnourished children.
Appropriate provision has also been made for providing breastfeeding and nutritional counseling to pregnant women and lactating mothers. For this, to make the ECD 104 Call Center more effective, to provide proper information to pregnant women and lactating mothers, the number of Nutrition Consultants in this call center has been increased so that expert advice on health care is provided to pregnant women and lactating mothers from time to time.
The MMBSY scheme aims to cover not only children, pregnant and lactating women, but also reaches to husband and family members by involving them for incentive for family of anemic pregnant women. A four-tier monitoring and supervision system has been established for the successful implementation of the MMBSY, which shall begin at the service delivery level and reviewed at government level. An application for record keeping and tracking of beneficiaries with data portability and interoperability was also be developed under the scheme.
This scheme will prove to be a milestone in achieving better health and nutrition parameters for children, adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women in the state and will improve the statistics of NFHS-5 in time bound manner.
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