Smriti Irani launches protocol for identification, management of malnourished children at anganwadi level

A Nutrition Rehabilitation Center (NRC) is a unit in a health facility where children with SAM are admitted and managed. Earlier, all SAM children were admitted to the NRCs, according to the protocol.

So far, a majority of NRCs have been managing SAM children of six-59 months but these centres will now extend services to infants aged one-six months with severe malnutrition or severe nutritional risk.

According to the protocol, every SAM child who passes the appetite test and all severely underweight (SUW) children shall be screened by the medical officer of primary health centres within three-five days of the test to identify any health issues, hidden infection or danger signs.

Children with any medical complication should be referred to the nearest health facility for medical management and further treatment of sickness, it said.

The protocol said infants less than six months of age, who are visibly wasted or oedematous or too weak or feeble to suckle, should be immediately referred to the nearest health facility or NRC for evaluation and treatment by ASHA/AWW/ANM.

Further, severely underweight children of up to six months should also be referred to NRCs directly for further management as per WHO guidelines, the protocol said. Irani said that out of over seven crore children evaluated at anganwadi centres, as many as seven per cent were found to be severely acute malnourished.

She also said 42,000 mini-anganwadi centres have been converted into anganwadi centres and that all equipment at these centres would be refurbished every four years.

The protocol said the identification of malnourished children should be done using growth monitoring data (weight-for-height and weight-for-age).

After the identification of children using growth monitoring data, appetite tests shall be carried out by the AWW for all SAM children in order to assess for the presence of medical complications, according to the protocol.

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