The 
Indian Express              17.12.2013

AMC puts the spotlight on malnutrition among students

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) School Board has devised a
novel way to address malnourishment among children. It organised a play
competition on malnourishment in 450 schools across Ahmedabad where more
than 50,000 students from Class I-VIII participated and performed
different plays. They had prepared these plays with the help of teachers
and parents. While each play was enacted in a different manner, each
carried a similar message — the gravity of malnourishment and the ways
to fight it.

The project took off in each school with the presentation during
parents’ meet, held simultaneously in all municipal schools on December
3. The teams were shortlisted from each school after the zone-level
competition. The final city-level round, among 300 students representing
19 teams, was concluded on Monday. While one team was from Class I-V,
the remaining were from upper primary schools.

Cash awards of Rs 5,000, Rs 3,000 and Rs 2,000 were given to the
three winning teams – Mahatma Gandhi Ashram Shala, Behrampura Shala and
Asarwa Gujarati Shala, the Number 1, 2 and 3 teams respectively. These
teams will also be trained by special choreographers and experts for the
presentation during Kankaria Carnival to be held in the last week of
December.

“The idea behind this project is to create awareness about
malnourishment and send across a message to parents. Students enacted
various ways to fight malnourishment and the importance of having a
healthy diet. This is for the first time in the history of the AMC
school board that such an initiative has been taken. We have been
organising debate and elocution competitions among students, but a play
competition on malnourishment is for the first time,” said AMC School
Board chairman Jagdish Bhavsar. He added that the school board was
planning to organise a rally by students on malnourishment. “The budget
on ways to fight malnourishment among school students has already been
allocated,” said Bhavsar.

The School Health Programme (SHP) for the year 2012-13 revealed that
an alarming number of 4.37 lakh children have been suffering from
anaemia and malnutrition. A total of 1.5 crore students in 99,036
anganwadi centres, primary, secondary and higher secondary school across
the state were covered under the health programme.

In response to the huge number of anaemic and malnourished
children in the state, the state Health Department started taking
measures in collaboration with the Education Department. After health
awareness meetings with parents, vitamin supplements are being
administered to students in schools and distributed among parents,
keeping in view the high deficiency of vitamins among school children.
The Health Department will be roped in to train the winning teams for
the presentation during Kankaria Carnival. A team of health experts,
including doctors and dieticians, will work with the school board on
this project.