Madhya Pradesh's Children and Women Issues Blog

.....When a rural health centre works, it works wonders

2011-10-21T00:12:00.000-07:00

Shivpuri (Madhya Pradesh), Oct 20 (IANS) Village woman Lajja was blessed with her second child in the wee hours of the morning at Chharch. The baby was born at the health centre in her village and she feels relaxed, safe and at home. The centre is taking care of her treatment, food and medicine - for free.

It is being funded by the Department of Health and Family Welfare, government of Madhya Pradesh, under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). This is unlike her first baby's birth when she had to travel more than 35 km away from her home. The centre was around at that time but was non-functional. Now it is revamped, expanded and provides 24x7 institutional care for pregnant women and infants. This has been possible due to funding from NRHM and support from Unicef.

It is helping save lives in an area that is 75 km away from the district headquarters and to reach which, one has to cross Kuna jungle. A well-built connecting road has helped. The centre makes an ambulance service available for pregnant women called Janani Express and serves as a vaccination centre for children. It is also the distribution point for vaccines for seven nearby centres.

Poonam, a seven-month-old girl, sits in her mother Jiyo's lap in the covered lawns of the Chharch sub health centre. Jiyo carries her child's immunisation card and waits for her turn to get Poonam vaccinated by an auxiliary nurse.

Poonam was born at a district hospital and was referred there by the Janani Express parked at the centre. Jiyo had problems in her delivery and thanks to the sub health centre and the availability of ambulance service in the remote area, she was taken to the district hospital. Jiyo thanks the staff at the centre and the facilities that helped her give birth.

Chharch village is in Pohri development block, 75 km away from the Shivpuri district headquarters. One has to travel through the Kuno jungle to reach this village. Though now it has a good connecting road to Shivpuri, it is still in the interiors and the nearest health centre is at Pohri, 35-40 km away.

Chharch used to be an old sub heath centre, but today it offers 24x7 services of institutional delivery for pregnant women. More than 500 safe deliveries have happened since its renovation in 2010. Two deliveries happened the day we visited. The sub health centre has had the Janani Express attached to the centre and is available 24x7.

Unicef provided not only financial but technical support to make this centre functional.

'It is a boon for our people,' quips a zila panchayat member.

Chharch has electricity problems, making things difficult for a vaccine storage unit. But now a solar refrigerator has been provided to the centre by Unicef. It also has solar lamps in case its services are needed at night and there is no electricity. Unicef had provided 20 such solar refrigerators to the state which are being used in districts like Sehore, Shivpuri, Dewas, Barwani, Khargone, Jhabua, Bhind, Morena, Chhatarpur and Panna. Chharch is proof of what wonders a fully functional rural health centre can do.

- Anil Gulati

चम्बल में बेटियों को बचाने के लिए आगे आईं महिलाएं

2011-09-17T16:47:00.000-07:00

ग्वालियर। मध्य प्रदेश के ग्वालियर-चम्बल अंचल की पहचान बागी तेवरों के कारण पूरी दुनिया में है। डकैतों का ‘साम्राज्य’ भले ही अब इस इलाके से खत्म हो गया हो, मगर यहां के लोगों के बगावती तेवर अब भी बरकरार हैं। इस बार महिलाओं ने बागी तेवर अपनाते हुए बेटियों को बचाने की मुहिम छेड़ दी है। मध्य प्रदेश के चम्बल इलाके के मुरैना तथा भिंड जिले में बेटियों के जन्म को वर्षों से अभिशाप माना जाता रहा है। यहां आलम यह है कि बेटियों का या तो जन्म से पहले गर्भपात करा दिया जाता है या उन्हें जन्म के बाद मार दिया जाता है। यही कारण है कि यहां बेटियों की संख्या का अनुपात राज्य के अन्य जिलों के मुकाबले सबसे कम है।
राज्य में शिशु लिंगानुपात 1000 बालकों पर 912 लड़कियां हैं, तो मुरैना में यह आंकड़ा 825 तथा भिंड में 835 है। यह स्थिति हर किसी को चिंता में डाल देने वाली है। सरकार की ओर से जारी कोशिशें भी अपना असर नहीं दिखा पाई हैं। बालिकाओं की कम होती संख्या से चिंतित महिलाएं ही बेटियों को बचाने के लिए आगे आई हैं। आंगनबाड़ी कार्यकर्ता गांव-गांव जाकर महिलाओं को जागरूक कर रही हैं, वे गीत-संगीत व नाटकों के जरिए महिलाओं को बेटी का महत्व बता रही हैं। आंगनबाड़ी कार्यकर्ताओं के ‘मुट्ठी बांधो बहना’ नाम से भिंड व मुरैना जिले में जनजागृति लाने वाले दल बनाए गए हैं। ये दल महिलाओं को बता रहे हैं कि बालिकाएं रहेंगी तो सृ‌ष्टि बचेगी। वे महिलाओं को संदेश दे रही हैं कि किसी भी सूरत में बेटियों को न मारें और न ही ऐसा करने वालों का साथ दें। अगर ऐसा करने को कोई मजबूर करता है, उसके खिलाफ थाने में शिकायत दर्ज कराएं। भिंड जिले के सिंघवारी गांव की बुजुर्ग महिला नारायणी बताती हैं कि किसी दौर में यहां बेटियों को जन्म के साथ ही मारने की कोशिश शुरू हो जाती थी। नवजात के मुंह में तम्बाकू द॓कर मार दिया जाता था। जब ऐसा करने में सफलता नहीं मिलती थी तो उसकी गर्दन दबा दी जाती थी। वह बताती हैं कि पहले से यह प्रवृत्ति कम तो हुई है, मगर पूरी तरह खत्म नहीं हुई है। बेटियों को मारने की प्रवृत्ति का खुलासा अभी हाल ही में भिंड के खरउआ गांव में हुआ, जहां पूर्व सरपंच ने कथित तौर पर अपनी बेटी की हत्या कर दी। महिला बाल विकास के संयुक्‍त संचालक सुरेश तोमर बताते हैं कि बेटी की हत्या करने वाले व्यक्‍ति के खिलाफ कार्रवाई की गई है। वह आगे बताते हैं कि सरकार की ‘लाड़ली लक्ष्मी’ जैसी योजना बेटियों को समस्या मानने वालों की सोच में बदलाव लाने में मददगार बन रही है।

महिलाओं में जागृति लाने के लिए आंगनबाड़ी कार्यकर्ताओं के भिंड व मुरैना में दल बनाए गए हैं। ये दल जब भिंड जिले के सिंघवारी गांव में नाटक प्रस्तुत कर रहे थे तो महिलाएं व बच्चियां इसके गीत-संगीत से प्रभावित नजर आईं, साथ ही उन्होंने बेटियों को बचाने का संकल्प भी लिया, मगर गांव के पुरुष वर्ग के लिए ये महज मनोरंजन से ज्यादा कुछ नहीं थे। दल की सदस्य भी यह बात मानती हैं कि उन्हें कई दफा विषम परिस्थितियों का सामना करना पड़ता है, मगर आखिर मेंं वे अपना संदेश पहुंचाने में सफल हो ही जाती हैं। वे हर रोज दो गांवों में जाकर गीत-संगीत के जरिए महिलाओं को उनका अधिकार भी बता रही हैं और बेटियों को बचाने का संदेश भी दे रही हैं।

पूरे देश में मानव तस्करी एक बड़ी समस्या

2011-08-28T09:47:00.000-07:00

भोपाल.शुक्रवार को यूनीसेफ के तत्वावधान में सेंसटाइजेशन ऑफ पुलिस ऑफिसर्स टूवर्ड्स वलनेरेबल ग्रुप्स एंड ह्यूमन ट्रैफिकिंग इशूज पर दो दिवसीय कार्यशाला का आयोजन नूर-अस-सबाह पैलेस में किया गया। कार्यक्रम का शुभारंभ मुख्य अतिथि गृहमंत्री मप्र उमाशंकर गुप्ता ने दीप प्रज्जवलन कर किया।

इस दौरान कार्यक्रम में विशेष रूप से उपस्थित यूनीसेफ मप्र चीफ डॉ. तान्या गोल्डनर ने अपने विचार रखें। उन्होंने ने बताया कि पूरे देश में मानव तस्करी एक बड़ी समस्या है। यह एक गंभीर समस्या है और चौकाने वाली बात यह है कि इन तस्करी के कारोबार में बच्चों की तस्करी भारी मात्रा में कि जा रही है। उन्होंने ने बताया कि मानव तस्करी पर काबू पाने के लिए हमें कड़े कदम उठाने कि जरुरत है।

इस दौरान उन्होंने शासन के साथ-साथ आमजन से इस के खिलाफ आवाज उठाने की अपील की है। उन्होंने इस मुद्दे पर समाज में जागरुकता की अलख जलाने पर जोर दिया। कार्यक्रम में बतौर मुख्य अतिथि उपस्थित गृहमंत्री उमाशंकर गुप्ता ने इस समस्या से निबटने के लिए कड़े कदम उठाने का आश्वासन दिया। उन्होंने बताया कि इस समस्या से निबटने के लिए हम तैयार हैं और हमारी पुलिस इस मसले पर संवेदनशील भी है।

कार्यक्रम के दूसरे चरण में सेंसटाइजेशन ऑफ पुलिस ऑफिसर्स टूवर्ड्स वलनेरेबल ग्रुप्स विषय पर चर्चा की गई। इस सत्र में उत्तराखंड की रिटायर डीजीपी कंचन चौधरी ने समाज में बच्चों और महिलाओं की स्थिति के बारे में चर्चा की। उन्होंने बताया कि पुलिस को अपने व्यवहारिक कार्य के दौरान लोगों से सहीं व्यवहार रखना चाहिए। उन्होंने इस दौरान बच्चों और महिलाओं के सशक्तिकरण पर बल दिया। उन्होंने बच्चों में तेजी से बढ़ रही अपराध प्रवत्ति के कारणों पर प्रकाश डाला। इस दौरान आईपीएस पी.एम मोहन ने बताया कि आमजन की राय पुलिस के प्रति ठीक नहीं है। वह पुलिस के काम करने के तरीके को गलत समझती है।

इस दो दिवसीय कार्यक्रम में चार-चार सत्र होंगे जिसमें देश के विभिन्न शहरों और प्रान्त से वक्ता अपने विचारों को रखेंगे।

Media workshop to promote breastfeeding held

2011-08-21T15:04:00.001-07:00

Gwalior - The State Department of Women and Child Welfare, along with UNICEF, launched a week-long campaign for world breastfeeding week (August 1-7) on Sunday by organising a workshop for mediapersons on the issue.

Highlighting the importance of breastfeeding to enhance health quotient and safety of child and mother, Joint Director Women and Child Development Department Suresh Tomar said in his opening remarks, “Breastfeeding can help in curbing malnutritionto a large extent.”

“Exclusive breastfeeding for first six months after birth could have the single largest impact on child survival. Media can play an important role by creating awareness and breaking myths on this issue, he added. He thanked UNICEF for supporting a campaign on breastfeeding.

Ajay Gaur, a well-known child specialist said, “An infant must be breastfed within an hour of birth and one should continue breastfeeding a child for atleast upto two years.”

“This has a long lasting impact on child's health and growth and it has been proven scientifically,” he added.

Manoj Verma, a senior journalist emphasised the need to sensitise media on this crucial issues. He said media has a social responsibility to create awareness on such social issue.

A street play on the issue of breastfeeding was staged on this occasion.

Physically-challenged-Munni-Bai-brings-change-single-handedly-in-Shivpuri

2011-08-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

Munni Bai is physically challenged and has a limp in one of her legs. But that doesn't stop her from traversing the dusty by-lanes of a remote village in Shivpuri, one of the most backward districts of the country. She lives and works in village Atara of Shivpuri district which is around 150 km away from the hustle and bustle of the State capital.

Atara is no different from lakhs of other villages in the country there is 14 to 16 hour power cut, few private toilets, absence of pucca houses, no regular water supply to homes. However, there is one thing which makes this village different from many others, that is majority of children are healthy and are not malnourished in this village even though the most of the households are very apparently living below the poverty line.

Munni is the force behind increased awareness on breastfeeding in her village. She, in her casual but quite effective style, communicates with not only the women but also the men of the village and ensures that every newborn in this village is fed exclusively on mother's milk for the first six months and the child continues to be breastfed for at least two years after their birth.

"In addition to immunization, it is necessary to emphasise the importance of optimal breastfeeding practices to curb malnutrition," says Munni Bai, adding that this is one of the most effective ways to ensure better health for a child in early years.

"My son is two-and-a-half months old and I ensure that he is being raised for the first six months only on mother's milk. I was told about this by Munni Bai and the doctor in the hospital," says Sadhana, a resident of Atara village.

According to Census of India 2011, Shivpuri has a challenging indicators with 60 per cent children are malnourished, sex ratio of 877 (877 women for every 1000 men), an indicator of distinct gender bias. The child sex ratio in the district is 889. The overall literacy rate for Shivpuri is 63.7 per cent while the female literacy rate stands at 49.5 per cent.

Munni Bai, however, continues to work tirelessly hoping that if her village can be changed many other villages too can change.

Trained by UNICEF, to communicate effectively on such crucial issues, Munni Bai says, "From August 1 to 7, we are observing World Breastfeeding Week in a big way in this village. This time we have roped in men also. After all, mothers do need support of men in the family to ensure that they are able to take care of their children."

About 5 years ago, Munni Bai was identified as a village volunteer as part of joint intervention of UNICEF with district administration and NGOs. Later, she made her way to become anganwadi worker. She works very closely with the Panchayat and other agents trained under the UNICEF assisted projects.

"To begin with we have convinced men in the village that the women should not be working in fields for first two years after the birth of the child. It helps to ensure that the child is breastfed at the right time and does not have to remain hungry just because the mother is busy working in the field," she added.

An uphill task for M.P.

2011-08-20T20:13:00.000-07:00

The Hindu, byline - Vijetha S.N

Vaccines against deadly diseases like polio, tuberculosis and hepatitis B have to be stored, transported and administered with abundant caution or else the results can be disastrous, as was demonstrated to a group of journalists this past week during a field trip to villages around Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. The trip was organised by the UNICEF in partnership with the Indira Gandhi National Open University.

Madhya Pradesh has been facing the uphill task of trying to achieve full immunisation with regard to its migrant tribal and rural population. “Data for the State shows it is not up to the mark and that there is lack of awareness, lack of education and lot of misconception regarding vaccination,” said UNICEF communication specialist Anil Gulati.

The National Rural Health Mission funds the vaccine process, with the UNICEF providing all the technical help. The vaccine is administered at the village health centres, called sub-centres. In Darai village, a few km from Jabalpur, the anganwadi doubles up as health centre to service its 1,100 population.

The anganwadi, the Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) and the Auxiliary Nurse-Midwife (ANM) workers under the NRHM scheme are directly responsible for the actual administration of the vaccine. The cycle of the vaccination process starts with the ASHA worker. It is the ASHA worker's job to mobilise villagers and convince them to get vaccinated, which is not an easy job.

“There was this eight-month-old child suffering from malnutrition and the mother was not allowing us to vaccinate the child. I pestered her and stood outside her house for almost a month before the child was finally brought in…. I feel the child is alive today only because of me” said ASHA worker Sulochana, adding she does not get a salary but incentives whenever she manages to convince mothers to bring their children for immunisation or when she convinces an expectant mother to opt for institutional delivery.

In the next step, the anganwadi worker makes arrangements for the process and finally the ANM worker administers the vaccine . The vaccines have to be handled with extreme care, as they are extremely sensitive to slight changes in temperature, some being averse to heat and some to cold. There are special temperature-equipped storage and transportation facilities for both types of vaccines.

“Even though wrong administration of vaccine cannot result in death, it has to be administered within four hours of removal from storage or else the results could be deadly,” said District Immunisation Officer Satish Upadhya.

The responsibility, in a way rests on the ANM worker. “I have been trained especially to administer all vaccines and I take care to do a quality check on each and every vaccine, one mistake and the entire village will stop getting their children vaccinated,” said Lahera, who is the ANM for five villages.

Preventable disease is still the main reason for high infant mortality rates, despite efforts to provide vaccines against them, mainly because of unwilling parents due to misconceptions arising out of adverse reactions like fever and swelling immediately after the vaccine is administered.

A vaccine is not administered to the public unless it has been tested for years and it is continuously monitored for safety and effectiveness. However, every human body is different and a rare reaction following vaccines may occur but it is the only way in which to fight against death and morbidity due to disease.

According to the Census, infant mortality rate, considered to be a significant indicator of the overall health status of the country, has been on a steady decline from 129 per 1,000 live births in 1971 to 58 in 2005.

Although the country is far from achieving the legacy of the small pox eradication programme, the sustained campaign by the Government to provide vaccination against these pestilential and epidemic diseases is partially responsible for this decline.

प्राथमिकता में नौनिहालों का स्वास्थ्य

2011-08-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

मध्यप्रदेश में टीकाकरण को बढ़ावा देने के लिए 2011 को ‘टीकाकरण वर्ष’ घोषित किया गया है, प्रदेश में टीकाकरण की स्थिति को बता रहे हैं राजु कुमार.

मध्यप्रदेश में शिशु मृत्यु दर एवं बाल मृत्यु दर बहुत ही ज्यादा है. प्रदेश में टीकाकरण की कमी के कारण भी हजारों बच्चे असमय मौत का शिकार हो जाते हैं. ये बच्चे उन बीमारियों का शिकार हो जाते हैं, जिन्हें टीके के माध्यम से रोका जाना संभव है. सूचना एवं जागरूकता के अभाव में प्रदेश के आधे से ज्यादा बच्चे टीकाकरण से वंचित हैं. टीकाकरण के दायरे को बढ़ाने के लिए प्रदेश सरकार ने वर्ष 2011 को ‘टीकाकरण वर्ष’ घोषित किया है. राष्ट्रीय ग्रामीण स्वास्थ्य मिशन के संचालक डॉ. मनोहर अगनानी कहते हैं, ‘‘टीकाकरण के प्रति लोगों को जागरूक करने एवं इसके लिए मूलभूत संसाधनों को उपलब्ध कराने का प्रयास इस साल किया जा रहा है.’’

मध्यप्रदेश में पिछले कुछ सालों में टीकाकरण की स्थिति में सुधार देखने को मिलता है, पर उसे संतोषजनक नहीं माना जा सकता है. 2002-04 में जिला स्तरीय स्वास्थ्य सर्वे-2 में 30.4 फीसदी बच्चों का ही संपूर्ण टीकाकरण हो पाया था. यह 2007-08 में किए गए जिला स्तरीय स्वास्थ्य सर्वे-3 में बढ़कर 36.2 फीसदी तक पहुंच गया. इस बीच लगभग पांच साल में 5.8 फीसदी ही टीकाकरण बढ़ पाया था. जबकि इसके महज एक साल बाद कव्हरेज इवैल्यूएशन सर्वे 2009 में प्रदेश में संपूर्ण टीकाकरण का स्तर 42.9 फीसदी पर पहुंच गया. यद्यपि यह राष्ट्रीय औसत 61 फीसदी से बहुत पीछे है, पर एक से दो साल के बीच स्थितियों में आई तेज सुधार से यह संभावना जगी है कि मध्यप्रदेश को राष्ट्रीय औसत तक पहुंचने में ज्यादा समय नहीं लगने वाला है.

प्रदेश में टीकाकरण की स्थिति में सुधार के लिए यूनीसेफ राज्य सरकार को लंबे समय से मदद कर रहा है. अब टीकाकरण को बढ़ावा देने के लिए यूनीसेफ ने इंदिरा गांधी राष्ट्रीय मुक्त विश्वविद्यालय (इग्नू) एवं मध्यप्रदेश सरकार के साथ मिलकर ‘मीडिया की सहभागिता’ कार्यक्रम की शुरुआत भी की है. पिछले दिनों यूनीसेफ ने जबलपुर एवं भोपाल में इग्नू एवं स्वास्थ्य विभाग के साथ मिलकर पत्रकारों के लिए कार्यशाला का आयोजन भी किया. मध्यप्रदेश में यूनीसेफ की प्रतिनिधि डॉ. तान्या गोल्डनर कहती हैं, ‘‘टीकाकरण अभियान में मीडिया का सहयोग लेने से गांव के लोगों में टीकाकरण के प्रति जागरूकता बढ़ेगी और कार्यकर्ताओं लिए यह उत्साहवर्द्धन करेगा. टीकाकरण के प्रति जनमानस जागरूकता बहुत ही जरूरी है क्योंकि इससे जीवन की रक्षा होती है, खासकर ऐसे राज्य में जहां शिशु मृत्यु दर देश में सबसे ज्यादा है. हमारा उद्देश्य एक-एक बच्चे तक पहुंचना है, इसके लिए मीडिया एवं पत्रकारों की भूमिका बहुत ही महत्वपूर्ण हैं.’’

यूनीसेफ के संचार अधिकारी अनिल गुलाटी कहते हैं, ‘‘हमारा उद्देश्य मीडिया के माध्यम से लोगों तक टीकाकरण के बारे में सही जानकारी को पहुंचाना है, जिससे कि लोगों के पूर्वाग्रह खत्म हो और वे नियमित टीकाकरण में अपने बच्चों को लेकर आएं. इसके साथ ही जहां अच्छे प्रयास हुए हैं, तो उनकी प्रक्रिया मीडिया में आए, जिससे कि अन्य जगहों के स्वास्थ्य कार्यकर्ता प्रेरणा लेकर टीकाकरण के दायरे को बढ़ा सकें.’’ टीकाकरण से तपेदिक, पोलियो, डिप्थीरिया, काली खांसी, टेटनस, हेपटाइटिस-बी, खसरा एवं जापानी एंसीफैलाइटिस जैसी जानलेवा बीमारियों से बच्चों की रक्षा होती है. शिशु मृत्यु दर एवं बाल मृत्यु दर के आंकड़ों में कमी लाने के लिए इन बीमारियों से बचाव बहुत ही महत्वपूर्ण है.

प्रदेश में अभी भी सिर्फ 12 जिले हैं, जहां 50 फीसदी से ज्यादा संपूर्ण टीकाकरण हो पाया है. 5 जिलों में 40 से 50 फीसदी, 15 जिलों में 30 से 40 फीसदी एवं 18 जिलों में 30 फीसदी से भी कम टीकाकरण हुआ है. बालाघाट जिले में 90 फीसदी से भी ज्यादा टीकाकरण हुआ है. एक आदिवासी बहुल एवं दुर्गम इलाके वाले जिले में टीकाकरण की इस सफलता ने देश के लोगों का ध्यान आकर्षित किया है और उसे मॉडल मानते हुए उसी तरह के प्रयास अन्य जिलों में किए जाने की सिफारिश कर रहे हैं.

Saving the new born: A word of wisdom for men too!

2011-08-05T15:34:00.000-07:00

Guna (Madhya Pradesh), Aug 4 (IANS) On a rainy afternoon, a group of six youngsters, including a girl wearing dark red kurta and jeans, was waiting for the showers to stop in Tunk Parolia, one of the poorest and backward villages of Guna district.

As soon as the rain stopped, around 150 people gathered around them, many of them women covering their face with their sarees. A handful of village elders sat on homemade cots.

All eyes were on this group of young people, who took the centre stage on a mud platform and started performing a street play. For the village, which has no pucca houses and very few television sets, which remain switched off for the major part of the day due to absence of electricity, street plays hold more appeal than any Bollywood blockbuster.

The villagers’ eyes are glued to the mud platform, where the group is performing a 45-minute play titled ‘Baat Pate Ki’ ( Words of wisdom).

The play is laced with messages of how important it is to take care of the health of infants and mothers, and as the actors deliver their crisp dialogues in local dialect, with a hilarious script thrown in, the action suddenly stops.

One of the actors turns towards a group of young and middle aged men sitting in the audience and fires the question: ‘When was the last time you asked your wife whether she got time to breastfeed the child, whether your child has been immunized and whether the mother has also been immunized?’

A stunned silence follows. The men seem embarrassed.

The actor adds: ‘Isn’t it true that you are only bothered about your child the day he or she is born and then only when they have to be married?’

The men nod their heads and honestly accept the fact. One can catch the glimpse of faint smiles on the almost covered faces of the women, many with kids on their laps.

At the end of the play, the actors make the men take a pledge that they will support their wives and other women of their families.

And, to begin with, they agree to ensure that their children are breastfed. In the backdrop of the mud platform, named ‘Mukhauta Kala Manch’, are a series of posters highlighting the importance of breastfeeding.

‘We are highlighting the importance of healthcare for children, with major focus on breastfeeding,’ says 23-year-old Shishupal, a resident of the same village. He has registered as a local volunteer with Unicef.

‘I take out two to three hours every day after working in the fields and try to convince the villagers to change their approach on various issues. Breastfeeding is one of the most important issues,’ he said.

He had arranged for this performance in this village, which is around 40 km from Guna city. The village is not easily accessible, especially during monsoons.

‘The villagers cannot afford to go to doctors often and they hardly have any money for medicines. We are just telling them that it would be good if children are breastfed exclusively for first six months and for another one-and-a-half years. After that, they can be given semi-solid food along with mother’s milk. This increases their immunity and chances of survival,’ he added.

Vishnu Jha, who heads the street theatre group, says: ‘We are highlighting the importance of the role men have to play in supporting women and children through this street play.’

Jha and his group will be performing in 21 villages over the next few days to tell villagers the importance of breastfeeding newborns. Mukhauta Kala Manch artistes are a busy lot. It is almost dark and they have to prepare for another show in another remote village in the area. So the youngsters jump on to their rickety Maruti Van and humming songs from the street play, drive off, even as it starts drizzling again.

A quiet revolution saving rural children's lives

2011-08-05T15:33:00.000-07:00

By Sandeep Pouranik, IANS : Jhabua (Madhya Pradesh) : Eleven months ago, Rudra was born as a severely underweight infant in a remote village called Semrod in Jhabua, a predominantly tribal and one of the most backward districts of country with around 47 percent of its population living below poverty line.

Rudra weighed less than two kg at the time of his birth and the family was skeptical about his survival, even as they prayed for his well being. His mother Anita was worried and didn't know what to do. The elders in the family were pressing to give the child some herbs diluted in water or milk, as was the tradition in their village.

But Anita's sister Kala Jaani, a local Anganwari worker, opposed this 'recipe' for the new born, who was already struggling to survive. She convinced Anita to breastfeed the child within an hour of his birth.

Anita decided to follow Kala's instructions on timely initiation of breastfeeding.

Mother's milk was the only feed for Rudra during the first six months of his life. Anita didn't even give him water. Rudra's health and weight started improving singinificantly. On completion of first six months, Anita started giving him some soft-mashed food items as prescribed by Kala, apart from continuing to breastfeed him.

Today, Rudra is one of the healthiest children of his village. He weighs a healthy 8.2 kg and is out of the underweight category at Kala's Anganwari centre register.

But more importantly, he has become an example to the women of the village, convincing them to do away with superstitions and breastfeed their infants.

Kala, in fact, has been on the forefront of this campaign to convince mothers to breastfeed their newborns within an hour of birth, give the child only mother's milk for the first six months and continue breastfeeding for atleast the first two years of the baby's life.

"There is a marked difference in our village now among the children who have been exclusively breastfed and those who haven't," Kala told IANS.

"It was hard to convince people initially to understand the importance of breastfeeding, especially the village elders. But with time and sustained efforts, they have realised the importance, perhaps," she added.

According to Tania Goldner, chief of the Unicef office for Madhya Pradesh, breastfeeding and complementary feeding are simple and proven interventions which can reduce child mortality rates by upto 19 percent.

She adds that Unicef advocates initiation of breastfeeding within the first hour of birth, exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and timely introduction of nutritionally adequate, safe and age-appropriate complementary feeding to give a much needed and healthy start to an infant's life.

The result of such simple interventions is visible in Semrod village, where one can see healthy, energetic children playing with each other everyday. And the Angawari worker is in the forefront of the quiet revolution saving their lives.

After an initial training, Kala now has the knowledge and skills to work with mothers and families, and is fully committed to her community and their future -- the children.

Mobilising media on routine immunisation

2011-08-02T16:10:00.000-07:00

- Anil Gulati

Jabalpur : Somati, is an anganwadi worker working at anganwadi centre (child care centre) loacted at Sarrai village, 30 kilometres 'north off Jabalpur town' in Madhya Pradesh, central part of India.
This Tuesday she along with Auxiliary nurse midwives (ANM) and ASHA (accredited social health activists) were at the centre attending to rush of mothers who had come with their infants and little kids for vaccination.

As soon as one enters the centre, one could see vaccine vials on the molds of ice packs on the ‘only table covered by white sheet’ at the centre and on the other side mothers carrying vaccination cards in their hands and patiently waiting for their turn.

Few mothers had neatly wrapped vaccination cards of their children in a newspaper, while some had it in plastic bag. But all of them had it.

Last Tuesday of every month, this centre functions as immunization centre for the village. And today was the vaccination day; all children whose vaccinations were due are being vaccinated by ANM. Anganwadi worker and ASHA mobilised parents to come to the centre and also attend to mothers and give them the needed iron tablets.

This Tuesday was a special one.

They had visitors. The visitors were media representatives from Jabalpur, and Delhi. Mothers and children were being photographed, interviewed and were giving ‘radio bytes’! It was not only this but more.

Media representatives were informally interacting with community representatives and service providers, trying to understand from them how they work, what are their challenges, do all parents bring their children, if not how do they convince them? What do they do to make sure that vaccine remains potent even when the centre does not have electricity etc.

Some of the villagers knew names of few newspapers, which they had read but some they had not even heard. But today all of them were in the village and had come from Delhi and Jabalpur to see their work.

This is part of media partnership programme between UNICEF, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and Government of Madhya Pradesh to bring media on to its fold to help increase media discourse on routine immunisation.

‘Mobilising media on this issue will help create a push on generating demand by communities and push within the system for vaccination of children. This is important as 'immunization saves lives' and important in state which has highest infant mortality rates and a low routine immunisation level’ shares Dr Tania Goldner, Chief, UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh.

"We need to reach out to each and every child," she further adds. 42.9 % children of Madhya Pradesh are full vaccinated in Madhya Pradesh as per coverage evaluation survey done in the year 2009 by UNICEF.

As a part of this media partnership programme an interactive and educative video conference was held simultaneously at Delhi, Bhopal and Jabalpur between media, officials of health department of Government of India and Government of Madhya Pradesh, UNICEF and IGNOU in June this year.

Preceding this media persons were taken to field in Bhopal in June and later in Jabalpur.

"The idea was to see the immunisation in the field, how vaccines are stored, transported, what is cold chain, how vaccine vial monitor helps to identify potency of vaccine in field, share the micro planning process, with them," says Dr Gagan Gupta, Health Specialist with UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh.

He, along with Government of Madhya Pradesh health officials, walked media teams through the entire process of vaccine storage, micro planning process, to its distribution to community health centre, and to end point where children were being vaccinated at the health centre.

"Things are changing, people are getting aware of the immunization, but we need to expand our outreach and overcome barriers like low literacy levels, myths and superstitions. Hence need to reach out with information become more important and it is here where media and this partnership can play an important role," Dr J.L. Mishra, Joint Director Health, Jabalpur Division.

UNICEF highlights importance of breastfeeding in a special meet in Bhopal

2011-08-02T16:05:00.000-07:00

Bhopal: UNICEF organised a special meet here in collaboration with the Department of Women and Child Development. The sole purpose of the meet was to highlight the importance of breastfeeding, which according to Dr Tania Goldner, Chief of UNICEF for Madhya Pradesh, is ‘is a simple, proven, and natural intervention that can reduce child mortality rates.’

The first week of August is marked as World Breastfeeding week and members of UNICEF assembled together to gather the media support to spread awareness.

According to Dr Goldner, high coverage with optimal breastfeeding practices, especially exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, could have the single largest impact on child survival.

And this is important for state of Madhya Pradesh which has high infant mortality rates.

Anupam Rajan, Director Women and Child Development, Government of Madhya Pradesh said that state is stepping up efforts for promoting the same.

When girls ask: Why?

2011-05-30T02:47:00.000-07:00

India Blooms News Service. Little fingers from Bhopal bring out concern on bias towards girl child, water crisis and corporal punishment. Anil Gulati reports

"I even dance in my dreams, I love dancing, it is my passion, but my parents and brother don’t like my passion, they say I would not be able to dance after Class 10. But why? These is the question of Tammana, a girl presently in tenth grade in a Bhopal school.

Varhsa another girl studying in eighth grade questions "why there is difference between girl and boy child". She argues: "When my brother comes to house from outside my mom asks me to give him water and food. But will that be same when I come from outside? Will my brother be asked to help me with food and water?"

These are voices of girls who are part of school forums set by Child Rights Observatory, an NGO advocating on child rights in Madhya Pradesh in 20 urban schools of Bhopal with support from UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh.

Few of these voices of girl child were reflected in a poster published by Child Rights Observatory titled "What do our girls say?"

Seema, another girl who wrote in the poster, said that we are two sisters but they are clueless why people "ask my parents that if we have brother?"

School forums are child rights groups in 20 schools of Bhopal and nearby, which meet at intervals and discuss about child rights issues. But these are not ‘very formal meetings’. They are play and learn kinds, explains Sonali Jana, an officer with Child Rights Observatory.

"This is start of the process; gradually we encourage them to have their own wall paper and also plan to expand this network at district level. Children contribute in meetings by their writings, drawings and many times speak out in various forums which we organise," Jana says.

Naveen, Khushi, Deepti and Anjana are also members of school forums and by writing poems, stories have brought out the issue of child labour, impact of poverty on children, environment and also reflecting about new things they are learning in school.

Rahul Kushwah, a student of class 7th from Bhopal, contributed a drawing on impact of drinking unsafe water in children magazine titled as Chakmak, brought out by Eklavya, a non-Governmental organization working on education.

His drawing reflected on the harmful effects of drinking contaminated and unsafe water.

Ankur, a child in Class 6 in a Bhopal public school shares his concern on menace of polythene bags in the city and how they are lying around near dustbins and are not cleaned for days together. He expresses concern on cows eating polybags by writing an article in a children magazine run by a media house.

Likewise Pooja from same school talks about growing water crisis in Bhopal and how Bhopal’s water body Upper Lake is losing its water. Krishna, a girl child, questions why teachers and parents beat them instead of explaining where they have gone wrong.

Sometimes it is just scolding but there are times when they are asked to kneel down, stand outside in sun, beaten up with a stick, or are paraded around the lawn of school. But why?

"It is encouraging to see that we are getting more spaces for children to air their views and opinions. This needs to be encouraged and more opportunities should be created for children to speak out on issues that impact their lives, which is their right," says Dr Tania Goldner, Chief, UNICEF, Madhya Pradesh.

Age no bar in India when it comes to marriage!

2011-05-30T02:45:00.000-07:00

Rajgarh (Madhya Pradesh), May 16 (IANS) Lakhan, dressed in a cream suit with a flashy headgear on his forehead and a garland of currency notes around his neck, should have been attending his school and preparing for the ensuing summer break at this time of the year.

But donning the traditional attire of a groom, he was at an ancient temple in Rajgarh district of Madhya Pradesh to seek blessings from the local deity not only for himself but also for a teenaged girl sitting beside him.

Amid the unending stream of people, one could easily miss the girl, decked up in a saree, the traditional Indian dress for women. She refused to take off the veil in spite of the heat. There were several other young people like the couple making a beeline to seek the blessings of the deity.

Lakhan reasoned: "She is too shy and, moreover, it is not good to take off the veil in the presence of family elders."

Lakhan and his bride did not carry any proof of age before getting married at this temple and are visibly underage. So are hundreds of others like them.

Their families travelled from another district of Madhya Pradesh to get them married May 6 this year on the occasion of 'Akshya Trithiya', considered to be an auspicious day for solemnising marriages according to Hindu mythology.

Every year, 'Akshay Trithiya' witnesses thousands of child marriages in several parts of the country in blatant violation of the law.

According to the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, the minimum age of marriage in India is 21 years for males and 18 years for females.

The State of the World's Children 2009 report by Unicef indicates how widespread the violation of this law is in India.

According to the report, 47 percent of India's women aged 20-24 were married before the age of 18, with 56 percent of them in rural areas.

The report also revealed that 40 percent of the world's child marriages are conducted in India.

According to the National Family Health Survey-III, out of 47.3 percent of women aged 20-24 married by the age of 18, at least 2.6 percent were married before they turned 13, while 22.6 percent were married before they were 16.

Around 44.5 percent were married when they were between 16 and 17.

The survey also highlighted the fact that states like Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Andra Pradesh continue to witness a high number of child marriages.

Dr. Tania Goldner, chief of the Unicef office in Madhya Pradesh, says: "Child marriage is violation of child rights. Early marriage denies the child of the basic rights to health, nutrition, education, freedom from violence, abuse and exploitation and deprives the child of his or her childhood."

"At least 20 districts of Madhya Pradesh have high incidence of child marriages, particularly Badwani, Rajgarh, Shajapur, Sheopur, Neemuch, Sehore, Mandsaur, Chattarpur and Shivpuri," Nirmala Buch, president of Child Rights Observatory, an NGO working for child rights in the state, told IANS.

Though the state government is making an effort to curb the practice, there is a long way to go, says Buch.

Recently, the Madhya Pradesh government's department of women and child development and the district administration of Bhopal were able to intervene and stop three child marriages in the Ratibad area, but such success stories are rare.

Meanwhile, Lakhan had been able to convince his family elders to leave the newly wed couple alone at the temple for a minute.

The shy girl, who stopped going to school much earlier, lifted her veil and both of them got their first 6X4 inch 'Marriage photograph' clicked for Rs.20. Both of them were smiling in their first picture as a 'happily married' couple.

Need for effective enforcement of child rights: Experts

2011-05-09T20:29:00.000-07:00

Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh), April 30 : There are several laws to protect the rights of children in India but what is required is effective enforcement of these rights, prominent members of judiciary said here Saturday. "There are laws for children in India but the challenge is to enforce them. Child is the supreme asset of the nation," Justice Rakesh Saxena of Madhya Pradesh High Court in Jabalpur told the symposium on "Child Rights and Law".

Several district judges, civil society organisations and state government departments are participating in the two-day symposium organised by Human Rights Law Network in partnership with Unicef office for Madhya Pradesh and the state department for women and child development. The aim is to sensitise judiciary and senior government officials and to explore ways and means for strict implementation of these laws, said a UNICEF official.

Justice S.K. Gangele of Gwalior bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court emphasised the need for effective implementation of laws related to child rights at the ground level. "There is a need to engage workers at the grassroots level in the implementation of these laws," he added. Tania Goldner, chief of Unicef field office for Madhya Pradesh, said: "There is an urgent need to bring in higher level of enforcement and strengthen implementation of laws and schemes to let children enjoy their rights."

‘Child marriage is violation of children’s rights’

2011-05-09T20:28:00.000-07:00

Civil society consultation on prevention of early marriage was held here on Wednesday at the Academy of Administration. More than 100 civil society organisations from various districts of the State like Rewa, Hoshangabad, Chhatarpur, Rajgarh, Sehore, Raisen, Badwani, Jhabua, Morena, Tikamgarh, Datia, Guna, Gwalior, Indore, Shivpuri, and Bhind participated in the programme.

Chief of UNICEF in Madhya Pradesh Tania Goldner speaking on the occasion said that Child marriage is violation of children’s rights - whether it happens to girl or boy as it denies the basic rights to health, nutrition, education, freedom from violence, abuse and exploitation and deprives the child of his/her childhood. Though the marriages are coming down but the pace is slow, India contributes to 40 per cent child marriages in world, she added.

Goldner further said that State is taking steps and have law in place, as well as several schemes and programmes focused on Girl child and adolescent girls. But need is to engage communities, address the social norm related to child marriage and make sure that no child loses her or his childhood due to early marriage.

Two girls Pooja and Poonam from Bhopal narrated their stories in the meeting. Poonam resented her own marriage and was able to fight her family and now is studying in school.

Principal Secretary Women and Child Development BR Naidu spoke about the law and how law can help prevent early marriages. He added the need to make use of the law both by communities and civil society organisations. We need to engage community leaders to create awareness in them and make sure that all get married after legal age of marriage, he added.

Nirmala Buch President Child Rights Observatory said that need is to evolve a sustained long term campaign against early marriage in coordination with all stakeholders to support implementation of law in high alert districts. We need to empower decision making in the girl child through focusing on the issue in schools, she added.

Secretary Health & Family Welfare SR Mohanty said that the need is to engage gram Panchayats, Asha workers and field level workers to stop the child marriage at district level. Civil society organisation worked in groups and worked on the key priority areas they would like to focus on coming months and areas where they need support from the State and Police.

Poster on 'voices of girl child'

2011-01-25T12:31:00.000-08:00

A unique poster 'Voices of girl child' was released in Bhopal by 30 girls from 6 schools on the occasion of National girl child day. Girls expressed their views and opinions on gender discrimination & feeling about society in this poster.

A Bhopal based NGO Child Rights Observatory (CRO) has sat up school forums in 6 schools of Bhopal. All girls (Syeda, Pooja, Seema etc.) who were present at the launch was excited and said they want to rise higher but there are barriers in the society, it is the support from parents which encourages one to move forward. Pooja student of class 7th wrote in the poster that why girl’s are only advised to do things in certain manner or not and questioned that why norms are only for girls?

President of Child Rights Observatory Ms. Nirmala Buch says, "This is part of our work to encourage child participation. CRO has set up 6 school forums in Bhopal schools and we plan to expand this to other districts. The girls who have contributed are symbolic of many other who speak out in school forums on issues which impact them and against the discrimination." Dr. Sheela Bhambal, Secretary, Child Rights Observatory who encouraged the girls and in interaction with them said that girl is no less then boys. She added CRO publications will encourage children to contribute.

Anil Gulati Communication Specialist, UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh says, "This is way to lead and is one of the ways to let the voices of children to be heard." Lalit Shastri and Dr. Uday Jain, Executive Members of CRO interacted with girls present at the occasion and encouraged them to express their views and opinions.

Little Fingers to report for their newsletter 'Jagmag'

2010-12-18T08:55:00.000-08:00

Shivram Bhagel, Jitendar Jatav, Bhuriya are young kids studying in class seventh and eighth in middle schools of the Guna district of India. They are part of the excited 30 young kids who were participating in children training for giving their opinion a voice and helping to them to become 'child reporters'.

The training was held in their district on the 20th and the 21st of October 2010. All children part of this training are from class seventh and eighth of Government run middle schools in the villages of Tarawata, Imjhara and Dungsahara of Guna district of Madhya Pradesh. Guna is the district located in the State of Madhya Pradesh, in the central region of India. This children group is called 'Jagmag Sena', children group which promotes sanitation and hygiene among their peers. Groups like this are present in 25 schools of the Guna district. After this training they are planning to come out with their own monthly newspaper which will not only talk about issues of sanitation and hygiene but also cover various aspects which they feel and impact their rights.

In the two days training programme held they were trained in writing and reporting skills. They were made aware of intricacies of media, how newspaper is published, what is reporting and how they can write about issues which they feel are important to them. They also interacted with local media professionals for them to help them understand the importance of news. This training programme was organized by the UNICEF Office for Madhya Pradesh in partnership with Vibhavari and nongovernmental organizations and the district education department. This is a part of UNICEF initiative to promote child participation and give voice to children views and opinion.

Rajkumar from village Tarwata, who was one of the participating kids, wants to write about the problem of his village and he feels that the newspaper will help him to express his concern for his village. Rajni Ohja another student of class eight of the middle school from Tarawata Village questions why people spit on the road? Deepak Kopri of class 7th of middle school in Imjara writes about why some people in his village use a toilet while some do not.

These stories as being penned by children that are reflecting the local real issues which they face and many a times do not get covered in newspapers. Now they will have their own say, in their newspaper, which they have titled 'Jagmag'. Sunil Chaturvedi who works with Vibhavari the NGO which is partner in this initiative says that the 'children are excited and this training will not only help them in writing but will contribute in their overall development and give them exposure to much wider perspectives, which will boost their self confidence'.

HIVs pad up to fight stigma on World Aids Day

2010-12-03T14:15:00.000-08:00

Bhopal, Dec 1 (IANS) A friendly 20-20 cricket match was played here Wednesday. However, what was unusual about the match was that 10 of the 30 players were HIV positive. The two teams were called Minister's XI and Project Director's XI. Madhya Pradesh Minister of State for Health Mahendra Hardia captained the former while project director of Madhya Pradesh State Aids Control Society, Manohar Agnani, captained the other. 'No doubt forums and seminars on Dec 1 are informative and spread awareness. But a cricket match was a brilliant idea,' Hardia said.
'It sends an instant message to society that HIV positive people can play a game of cricket with as much energy and enthusiasm as any other person,' he added. UNICEF's Programme Manager Manish Mathur said it was not about winning or losing the match, the important thing was that we together win to spread awareness on the issue and help fight stigma and discrimination associated with it. Though the match ended in a tie but the spirit of fighting the stigma lingered on long after the game.

The match was organised by the Network of People Living With HIV AIDS Society, an association of activists working for HIV positive patients throughout the state.

Click Click - Girls to tell their own stories

2010-10-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh), Sep 16 (IANS) Schoolgirls Pooja Bhadoria and Kanchan Mishra are already feeling empowered. In a world where social prejudices are steeped against girls, they are hoping to wield the camera and tell their stories. The two are from Bhind and Morena, which figure among the 14 districts with some of the lowest child sex ratios in India - less than 850 girls per 1,000 boys, indicating a distinct bias against girls.

But now they are among 30 girls from Gwalior, Bhind and Morena who are being trained in the art of photography by UNICEF and the department of women and child development of the Madhya Pradesh government. 'I had not touched a camera before. It is exciting. Now I can show what I feel,' Priya, a Class 10 student of Rabindranath Tagore School from Bhind district, said after attending her first session of a three-day workshop that began here Wednesday. 'There are so many problems we face but we can hardly share that with anyone. Perhaps photography will help.' Two senior photographers, Prabhas Roy and Jagdish Yadav from Delhi, are training the girls to master the art of photography.

Monica Srivastava, a Class 10 student of Mahatma Lochandas School in Morena, is confident she would be able to highlight the problems of gender bias through photographs. 'The world may not believe if I tell them but how can anyone deny the facts shown in a photograph?' Both Bhind and Morena are around 500 km from state capital Bhopal. Girls in these districts have to fight poverty, lack of education as well as gender bias. The voices of girls have been muffled as they hardly have a forum to vent their feelings and social barriers don't permit them to engage in any activity outside other than going to school - if they are fortunate enough. But now 'clicks' of camera are going to break this barrier of silence.

There are plans to hold a public exhibition of photographs clicked by the girls over the next few days. These photographs will be displayed in the schools where the girls study. 'Such initiatives will go a long way in empowering these girls,' Ashok Shivhare, additional commissioner, Gwalior, told IANS after inaugurating the workshop. Anil Gulati, communication specialist, Unicef Office for Madhya Pradesh, said: 'This workshop is part of an effort to provide an opportunity to children to express their opinions using the power of photography.' 'This is part of the initiative to provide more space and forums to child participation and how they can be engaged to document what they know, see or hear on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the ground realities,' he added Suresh Tomar, joint director, department of women and child development, said: 'We are hoping the children would be able to use the art of photography to help realise the MDGs.'

40,000 people visit Red Ribbon Express in MP

2010-08-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

Bhopal, Aug 20 (IBNS) ’Red Ribbon Express’, an exhibition on train which aims to spread awareness about HIV/ AIDS in the country, is now in Madhya Pradesh.

About 40,000 people already visited the train in the 7 stations it has travelled. It entered Madhya Pradesh via Harda district on August 5, where about 6000 people including young people visited the train and interacted with the volunteers on the train. It entered Madhya Pradesh from Chhattisgarh and will leave for Uttar Pradesh from here. The train will be covering 11 stations in the State of Madhya Pradesh. It will be reaching Katni district on Aug 21, and following which the train will travel to Shahdol, Jabalpur and Satna.

Till date it has been to Harda, Bhopal, Sujalpur, Ujjain, Ratlam, Mandsore, Shivpuri. The eight coach train is attracting attention of young ones particularly in smaller stations and has variety of multimedia and interactive displays, which aim to provide information and answers to many queries on the issue of HIV/AIDS.

Madhya Pradesh State Aids Control Society, volunteers of Nehru Yuva Kendra, National Service Scheme and UNICEF are supporting mobilisation of people and are providing counsellors at the stations to help discussion on the issue like HIV/AIDS. Local civil society partners are supporting at the district level to help make it a popular affair. Network of positive people in Madhya Pradesh are supporting the train and a team is travelling with the train to educate the people about their issues and interacting with people to help reduce stigma.

Kids meet at Bhopal

2010-08-19T17:46:00.000-07:00

Bhopal, Aug 16 : At least 60 children from Bhopal, Vidisha, and Sehore districts of Madhya Pradesh participated in 'Anganwadi Bal Samagam', (children's meet) held at Jawahar Bal Bhawan, here on Monday. About 30 mothers also participated in the same. It was organised for children to listen to them, let them participate, play and also listen to mothers on their views about anganwadi's centres. This 'children's meet' was organised by Department of Women and Child Development in partnership with UNICEF.

Loveleen Kacker, Principal Secretary, Women and Child Development, Government of Madhya Pradesh, Tania Goldner, Chief UNICEF Office for Madhya Pradesh and Anupam Rajan, Director Women and Child Development interacted with children and mothers. They sought their opinion about what is working in anganwadi . Kacker, while interacting with children and mothers, said: "I am here to listen to them including things which are not working." Mothers shared about the benefits they were getting at anganwadi and also shared the problems they were facing. Snehlata Vishwakarma, Anganwadi worker from Vidisha, in her interaction with Tania Goldner of UNICEF, shared she enjoys being with children, listening to them, learning from them and she believes that it is not only about giving children food at anganwadi centre but making them citizens of tomorrow.

A special play by children from Bal Bhawan was presented which highlighted the issue of malnutrition and role of anganwadi's in combating the same and what can parents do to claim their entitlements. In second session children were taught drawing, painting and clay making. They enjoyed with clay and painted their thoughts on paper. Little fingers used paint to portray their thoughts and painted creatures they imagined. Children sang and danced to showcase their talent. R S Raghuvanshi, Director, Bal Bhawan, and Praveen Gangrade, Joint Director Bhopal, Kavita Sharma UNICEF Nutrition Specialist were also present at the meet.

12-yr-old helps sibling recover from malnutrition

2010-06-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

By Anil Gulati, Shivpuri, May 18 : Premwati, a 12 year old girl, feels elated and smiles when asked about her sister whom she carried in her lap. She had helped her younger sibling Anushka recover from severe malnutrition. Premwati lives in Bamera Panchayat of Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh.

Her sister Anushka was a year old when she was unwell and was suffering with severe acute malnutrition. NGO ASHA worker Ramswarupi Lodhi, during her rounds in May 2009 to their house, found the kid to be underweight and was in stage of severe acute malnutrition.

ASHA worker advised her parents that the child should be referred to the nearest Nutritional Rehabilitation centre for treatment and care. She briefed her parents, who are agricultural labourers, and urged them to take the little one for treatment.

Though her parents wanted to treat her, but they were worried about their other 5 children.

They were dependent on their daily earnings for bread. They could not afford to stay with the child at NRC for 14 days leaving their work.

It was then her sister Premwati took it upon herself and expressed her eagerness to stay with the little one at NRC and look after her.

Though she had to take time out of her school, a place where she loves to go, but in her own words, it was worth for her little sister. She stayed with her younger sibling was at NRC in Shivpuri district for 14 days.

Nutritional Rehabilitation Centre is centre for treatment and care of severe acute malnourished children. Madhya Pradesh has 202 such centres including this one at Shivpuri.

They are being run under National Rural Health Mission with support from State Government. Staff at NRC and ASHA worker fondly remembers how punctual Prenwati was with her sister meals, medicine.

She was loved by all NRC staff during her stay. After her stay at NRC, district team did follow the child at her home. Whenever team used to come to follow up, Premwati used to make sure that they see her sister.

Premwati studies in school now and not only vows to study further but wants to make sure that her sister too goes to schoolwhen she grows up.

Recently UNICEF team from UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh visited her at her village; she smiled with her sister in her lap while people of her village proudly talked about her to the visiting team.

One breaks free, but child marriages go on in Madhya Pradesh

2010-06-07T04:43:00.000-07:00

By Sanjay Sharma, Bhopal, May 14 (IANS) : All hell broke loose at Vanita's house when she refused to tie the knot before completing her studies. She was not even 18, the legal age for women to get married in India, pointed out the spunky Dalit girl.

It took people by surprise in Madhya Pradesh where every second girl is married off before she reaches marriageable age. Many of these weddings take place on the festival of Akshya Tritiya, which falls on Sunday.

Vanita, 17, who lives in a settlement for the poor in Bhopal, last week threatened to go to police when, after returning from school one day, she was told by her younger sister that she was about to be married off to a middle-aged man from Rajasthan.

Though her parents seem to have relented for now, she is not sure about the future stance of her drunkard father.

"I am still afraid that anyone can brainwash my father and he would insist on my marriage once again," says Vanita who has sought the support of the NGO Sarokar which works with girls on issues like child marriage and gender bias.

Vanita, who wants to be a policewoman after completing her studies, has also equipped herself with knowledge as to how to approach the police if any further pressure comes.

As many as 53 percent girls are believed to get married under the age of 18 years in the state while the national average is 47.4 percent, says a report of the National Family Health Survey.

The figure for Bihar is 69 percent, Rajasthan 65.2 percent, Jharkhand 62.3 percent and Uttar Pradesh 58.6 percent, the survey says. In Madhya Pradesh districts like Barwani, Sehore, Neemach, Chhatarpur, Mandsaur, Rajgarh, Shajapur, Sheopur and Shivpuri, more than 40 percent of girls are married before attaining the legal age, according to the findings of a district-level household survey carried out by the International Institute of Population Studies on behalf of the central government.

Though the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, bars the marriage of a girl aged below 18 years and a man below 21, the problem persists, with a majority of child marriages being performed on occasions like Akshay Trithya.

Madhya Pradesh's Women and Child Development Department has issued directives to its joint directors and district level development officers to upstream their efforts and prevent child marriages.

They are being supported by organisations like the Child Rights Observatory, an independent child rights monitoring body in Madhya Pradesh.

"Child marriage is a violation of a child's right. We are raising the issue with the state and will also support it in preventing the same," says Nirmala Buch, Child Rights Observatory president.

"Early marriage has profound physical, intellectual, psychological and emotional impact, cutting off educational opportunity and chances of individual development and growth for both boys and girls," Tania Goldner, chief of the Unicef office for Madhya Pradesh, told IANS.

"The consequences for girls are especially dire, as they are usually compelled into early childbearing which results in associated health risks and social isolation," she says.

"Child brides will frequently drop out of school and be exposed to higher risk of domestic violence and abuse, increased economic dependence, denial of decision-making power and inequality at home, which further perpetuate discrimination against and the low status of girls and women," she adds.

Saving Madhya Pradesh children with nutrition centres

2010-05-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

Sanjay Sharma, Bhopal, April 30 (IANS) : Kartar Adivasi, a one-year-old, weighed just 6.342 kg when he was admitted to the nutritional rehabilitation centre (NRC) at Narwar in Madhya Pradesh. Born to Banwari and Binia of village Kiranpura (Barkhadi), the child was kept at the NRC for 14 days and then under followup care at his house, with the result that his weight increased to 9.3 kg by the time he was 15 months old.

Like the one in Narwar, the nine NRCs of Shivpuri district have helped save the lives of 2,701 acutely malnourished children in 2009. Of them 53.5 percent were girls while the remaining 43.5 percent boys.

‘Of the 10 million below-five-years children in the state, 60 percent are malnourished and 100,000 are severely malnourished despite schemes to improve the services of ‘anganwadis’ (mother and child welfare centres) and nutrition centres. And half of them would have died but for the services provided by the NRCs,’ a health official said. Children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) face a 10-20 times higher risk of death as compared to those who are not severely malnourished.

The NRCs, started with the technical support of Unicef for treatment of malnourished children, have gone a long way in saving the lives of the severely malnourished children, acknowledge officials and poor families.They are managed by the state health department under National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). While the NRC at Shivpuri opened in 2006 was the first, Madhya Pradesh today has 202 such centres and plans to open 23 more, taking their total number to 225. The success of the NRCs in saving the lives of children has encouraged service providers.

‘However, running these centres is not easy,’ said an NRC staff member adding that they face great problems in keeping mothers in hospital for 14 days as they scramble for other children left behind at home.

Nevertheless, the NRCs are much-needed in the state. Their funding – annual cost of Rs.300,000 for each NRC – is provided by the state government through the NRHM while Unicef provides technical support and training for the centres’ staff. This includes one doctor, one nurse, one cook and two caretakers. Tania Goldner, chief of Unicef office for Madhya Pradesh, says NRCs are facility-based units for the care of children who suffer from SAM.

‘We are happy that the state government has set up NRCs in all districts of Madhya Pradesh. They are being managed under the NRHM while Unicef provides technical assistance,’ Goldner told IANS. ‘However, we need to encourage effective and efficient preventive measures at the community level to ensure that fewer and fewer children get into severe degrees of malnutrition,’ she added.

Madhya Pradesh: Holes in tribal food basket

2010-05-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

Rubina Khan Shapoo NDTV, Sunday May 2, 2010, Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh : The government is all set to pass the Food Bill that aims at giving monthly subsidised foodgrains to families Below the Poverty Line (BPL). However, the picture is not as peachy as it may seem. In a shocking story from the Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh nine tribal children have died in just five months due to malnutrition. This incident has occurred even as hundreds of tribal families continue to get their share of food but only on paper.

Kashi, is one of the Sahariya tribals from Todha village in the district who has lost her three-year-old daughter. The reason not hard to find. "This is actually cattle feed. But we eat it too," says Kashi.

The overall death toll between December 2009 and April 2010 of children due to malnutrition related diseases in Shivpuri district to now 23. The Sahariyas are not only one of the most primitive tribes in India but are also among its poorest. Malnutrition deaths are a critical reason of untimely deaths in the community.

As per law, they are entitled to 35 kilos of wheat, five kilos of sugar and five litres of kerosene every month under the Antodaya scheme. In Todha village, however, the ration cards are operated by the sarpanch in collusion with the ration shop owner. The result: Cards are updated flawlessly while half the amount of food is given. Akki, a tribal from the village tells us he is given 25 kilos of wheat. But how much does he write in the card? Thirty-five kilos.

In nearby Pohri, another tribal-dominated district block ration delivered is for over 40,000 residents when the block has only 35,000 people who hold ration cards. An RTI application has proved that more than 5,000 cards are bogus.

However, Raj Kumar Pathak, Collector, Shivpuri district says, "There are no fraudulent ration cards. A probe is on." Malnutrition among children in Madhya Pradesh is 60 per cent, the highest in the country. In its tribal belts like Shivpuri it is even more intense. In the critical battle against hunger, the tribals are becoming the easiest victims.

Child marriages still prevalent in several MP districts

2010-04-26T11:36:00.001-07:00

The Pioneer, Bhopal, Monday April 26, 2010 : As many as 57.5 per cent of girls in Barwani get married before attaining the age of 18 years. Not only Barwani, but other districts like Sehore, Neemach, Chhatarpur, Mandsaur, Rajgarh, Shajapur, Sheopur, Shivpuri are also facing a similar problem with more than 40 per cent of girls getting married there before 18 years.

These are the figures provided by the district-level household survey done by International Institute of Population Studies on behalf of Government of India. Madhya Pradesh is one of the States, which has the high incidence of child marriages, many of which happen during Akshay Tritiya, which is an auspicious occasion for marriages according to the Hindu religion.

This year, Akshay Tritiya is falling on May 16. Like every year, the State Government is busy preparing an action plan to prevent child marriages around that day. The Government of India had adopted the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act in 2006 but conviction rate under this Act is very low. As per the National Crime Bureau records last year, 11 people were convicted and two cases were registered in Madhya Pradesh.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says it is a violation of child rights. Tania Goldner, Chief of UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh while speaking to The Pioneer said child marriages had adverse effects for the child bride and bridegroom and for the society as a whole. For both girls and boys, marriage has profound physical, intellectual, psychological and emotional impacts, cutting off educational opportunity and chances of personal growth.

She claimed that the consequences for girls were especially dire, as they are usually compelled into early childbearing, associated health risks and social isolation. Child brides frequently drop out of school and are exposed to higher risk of domestic violence and abuse, increased economic dependence, denial of decision-making power, inequality at home, which further perpetuates discrimination and low status of girls/women.

In India nearly half of all young women marry before the age of 18 (47 per cent as per National family Health Survey) and the situation is even more acute in rural areas

Right to education in Madhya Pradesh from April 1

2010-04-24T06:57:00.000-07:00

Sanjay Sharma, IANS : Bhopal: The Right to Education (RTE) Act will be implemented in Madhya Pradesh from April 1, state Minister of School Education Archana Chitnis said here on Sunday.

Addressing a state level workshop on the RTE Act, the minister said the state government will be implementing from April 1, 2010, the act which envisages free and compulsory education to all its children till Class 8.

"To achieve compulsory education we will have to make school education interesting, which is a challenge and for the same we need to have tripartite responsibility of the state, teacher and parents," she said.

The workshop was held at RCVP Noronha Academy of Administration in Bhopal under the joint aegis of the state's education department and Unicef in order to familiarise the education and other departments with the act and seek suggestions from various stakeholders on the draft rules prepared by the state education department.

Speaking on the occasion, Tania Goldner, chief of Unicef office for Madhya Pradesh, said this act is a vehicle for change to accelerate progress in the education sector. Principal Secretary of Education department Snehlata Srivatsva said this is a unique act as it makes education a constitutional right. IANS

Workshop against female foeticide

2010-04-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

Gwalior, April 18 (IBNS) A one-day workshop for raising concern against female foeticide was held at Gwalior on Friday (April 16).

The theme being 'Say no' to female foeticide, was organised by Department of Women and Child Development, Gwalior. Welcoming the participants and speaking at the workshop Suresh Tomar Joint Director Women and Child Development department said that they are undertaking a special campaign to involve communities, parents, youth groups and schools children in 50 villages of Bhind and Morena each.

As a part of campaign department will be supporting film shows, workshops with various target groups in Gwalior, Bhind and Morena district to help build an environment against female foeticide.

Anil Gulati, Communication Specialist, UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh said that media can play an important role by bringing the issue to forefront of its discourse.

He added that as per Census 2001 data nine districts of the State of Madhya Pradesh have child sex ratio less then 900 girls / 1000 boys which include Sheopur, Morena, Datia, Bhind, Gwalior, Shivpuri, Guna, Tikamgarh and Chhattarpur. "It is the need of that day efforts are scaled up to stop this violation of child rights." He praised the efforts of the Department of Women and Child in initiating this campaign.

International team to visit Dhar for water and sanitation interventions

2010-04-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

Team of 12 international officers from various countries i.e. Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea is in the State of Madhya Pradesh as a part of International learning exchange programme of UNICEF and Department of Drinking Water Supply, Government of India. This is 4th year of ILE in India. The team will be visiting Dhar on April 15- 16, 2010 and see the work being done in tribal areas on water and sanitation sector in the district. The officers are working with UNICEF in various countries and with respective National Governments.

They will be visiting Tirla, Nalcha and Dharampuri block of Dhar district to see community based interventions in water and sanitation, flouride mitigation initiatives and school sanitation. During their visit to the district they plan to visit Nirmal Gram villages, tribal hostels, schools, meet and interact with panchayat representatives and communities.

This is part of International Learning Exchange programme (ILE) which is a collaborative effort of UNICEF and the Department of Drinking Water Supply, Government of India. The programme provides a platform to professionals from other developing countries for learning and knowledge-sharing from recent successes in, and challenges to India’s water and sanitation sector. 59 participants from 18 countries, namely, Afghanistan, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, Cambodia, Niger, Rawanda, Ghana, Djibouti, Angola, Bangladesh, Uganda, Indonesia, Zambia, Bhutan, Somalia and Eritrea are visiting India.

Madhya Pradesh village girl inspires others to take up studies

2010-04-14T16:19:00.001-07:00

PTI : The Government Girls’ Middle School at Sherpur village in Madhya Pradesh is now being widely recognised as “Lalita Ka School.”

Lalita is no politician but a gritty 15-year-old, whose firm determination to study has motivated other girls to follow suit at the same very school from where she studied from Class VI to VIII. Lalita, who has moved to another school for her further studies now, was the lone student in all the grades for the last three years, but this did not discourage her from continuing her studies.

The school, located about 50 km from here, did not deter Lalita to travel all along to attend classes in Standard VI, VII and VIII, where three male teachers helped her out in all the subjects.

The teenager cleared her Class VIII exams with first class marks, inspiring other girls in her area to take up studies in that school. Her father Madanlal Girwal, a government employee, was initially a little bit worried as she was alone in the classes but then supported his daughter seeing her zeal for education.Her parents have now decided to let Lalita continue her studies in another school, where she is not alone.

Middle School Head Master Ashok Jaat said, “There were better schools around. Hence attendance of girls at our institute was thin. But now things have changed after Lalita scored first class marks. Now nearly 15 girls have taken admission in our school.” The population of Sherpur is 700, Mr. Jaat said.

For quality mid-day meals, MP teachers to taste food

2010-04-11T10:25:00.000-07:00

Milind Ghatwai, Indian Express :

This was in Indian Express today and is one more of Milind's 'different story' on issue of education in MP.

In a novel attempt to improve the quality of mid-day meals served in schools, authorities in Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh have made it compulsory for teachers to taste the food before serving it to students.Though the ambitious government programme of serving meals in schools has helped enroll more students and increase attendance, the quality of food has often been a concern due to poor implementation on ground.

“There were lots of complaints of unpalatable food being served or children taking ill after the mid-day meals,” in-charge of MDM in Sagar Abhinit Sharma told The Sunday Express on what prompted the authorities to involve teachers in the drive to improve quality of food served in more than 3,000 primary and middle schools.

Incidentally, the practice is prevalent in jails where it’s incumbent on the superintendents or jailers to eat a few morsels of food served to prisoners. The Sagar administration has sent a circular to Chief Executive Officers of Janpad Panchayats and Block Resource Coordinators asking them to ensure that students are served food only after teachers have checked it.The food will be served to students only if teachers find it palatable and have been warned of action for complaints received later.

In rural areas, self-help-groups cook and transport the mid-day meals to schools and get a little more than Rs 2 per student. In addition, the groups are given 150 and 100 grams of grains per secondary and primary student, respectively. “To save money, many groups compromise on quality and show disregard for cleanliness,” an official said.

Need to focus on water quality

2010-04-03T23:48:00.000-07:00

Central Chronicle, Bhopal, March 21: A two day programme for UNI stringers and students of journalism was hosted by Makhanlal Chaturvedi University of Journalism and UNI at Bhopal. Speaking at the inaugural B K Kuthiala Vice Chancellor of University of Journalism said that content is the key and plays an important part in the news. He added that media can play a positive role in bringing in social change. A K Bhandari Chief Editor and Chief General Manager UNI said that UNI news agency plans to become a global player and has already initiated its presence in UNI TV and web portal. He said that with its wide presence UNI can help in bring in rich content for its subscribers.

Speaking at the occasion said that Anil Gulati Communication Officer with UNICEF said that media can play a role in bringing developmental issues particularly which impact children to forefront of public discourse and also create awareness on the solutions. He said that taking advantage of World Water Day which is being marked on March 22, 2010 media can bring discussion on the issues of water quality. He added that theme for this year is ‘clean water and health world’, which is very relevant for our times.

Aditi Prasad input incharge of UNI said this workshop will help increase knowledge of our stringers and students of journalism and will help us in our mission to reach out to people. Later speaking in the evening session Nagendra Prasad Singh, Water and Environmental Sanitation officer with UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh said that each day about 690 children under five years die due to diarrheal disease many of these deaths are water borne and can be prevented. Point of use water treatment alone can reduce diarrheal morbidity by 39 % Pushpinder Pal Singh Head of Department of Journalism of MakhanLal Chaturvedi University of Journalism conducted the programme. Participants were trained by N B Nayar, Prosenjit Dey, Vikram Kapoor, Shailendra Mahajan and Rachna Johri

School kids show the way in water conservation

2010-04-03T23:45:00.000-07:00

Arun Anand, IANS : Vikas Pawar, a student of Class X, was so impressed by the Wise Water Management efforts being implemented in his Madhya Pradesh school by Unicef that he made it part of a science project.

He built a cardboard and plaster model showing how water could be conserved and recycled effectively to avoid a shortage. His Government Scheduled Caste Residential School is in Katara Hills near Bhopal, capital of the state which sees acute water shortage in summer.

'There are two ways by which water is being conserved in my school hostel. One is by collecting rain water during the monsoons in a Ferro Cement tank with a 50,000 litre capacity,' he explained. 'Collected rain water can be used for drinking and cooking purposes during the summer months when there is a shortage of water. 'The other method is by recycling grey water for flushing toilets,' Pawar said.

'Grey water' is that which has been used once for bathing and washing clothes. On an average, a student in the school hostel uses 30 litre of water per day in the bathroom. This water could be reused for toilet flushing and kitchen gardening. The school has 209 residential students.

'Used water from bathrooms is passed through a sponge filter,' said Nagmati Malviya, a Class XII student, pointing to a large pipe emerging from the outer wall of the bathrooms.

'Materials like plastic sachets of shampoo, soap wrappers get filtered as the water passes through this filter. The water is guided into a reservoir which is divided into five sedimentation tanks.' Suspended particles are settled in the first tank before the water is passed on to the adjoining segment and subsequently gets filtered while passing through the various chambers.

The second, third and fourth tanks have boulders of different sizes. As water passes in an up-flow, down-flow current through the filters, it leaves behind all perceptible impurities. Filtered water then flows down a series of 'aeration steps' that resemble a flight of stairs.

'The purpose of running the water in the open is to bring it in contact with oxygen from the atmosphere to reduce the odour of filtered greywater if any,' Nagmati said, giving a demonstration.

'The fifth tank collects the filtered water which is pumped by a motor to the tank placed on the roof of the hostel from where it goes to the cistern in the toilets and the remaining water is used for kitchen gardening.'

To combat the shortage of drinking water during summer, the school collects rain water from July to September every year. 'The school being located on a hill, there is acute water shortage during summers. The soil is rocky and the water level is far below,' said Mamta Ahirwar, scout training teacher. 'During the monsoons, all the water would flow down the hill slope and was wasted.'

But for the last one year, this school collects rain water, stores it in a reservoir with 50,000 litre capacity. The water is filtered, treated and then used for drinking and cooking.

The Wise Water Management (WWM) concept was developed by UNICEF, National Environmental Engineering Research Institute and Public Health Engineering Department, government of Madhya Pradesh. It was demonstrated in eight tribal residential schools of Dhar and Jhabua districts of Madhya Pradesh.

The WWM scheme was also demonstrated in two scheduled caste residential schools in Bhopal. The department of Tribal Welfare in Madhya Pradesh is now replicating this model in 400 tribal residential schools across the state. 'This will improve the quality of life for children and also have a positive effect on the environment. This is just a beginning. I hope this model will be replicated across the state for the benefit of all children and families of Madhya Pradesh,' says Tania Goldner, chief of UNICEF field office for Madhya Pradesh.'

'Fulfillment of rights justice for children'

2010-03-27T21:21:00.000-07:00

Bhopal, Mar 25 (IBNS) A training meet on child rights and protection issue was hosted by RCVP Noroha Academy of Administration and UNICEF on Thursday for trainee officers of All-India/Central officers. Speaking at the function Amod Kant, Chairperson Delhi Commission for protection of child rights said: "Fulfillment of rights and needs is justice for children." He is also associated with Prayas an NGO working for children in need of care and protection across many states in India.

He added State needs to take care of children not only who are in conflict with law, but who are victims and witnesses. And inspite of progress in India we have major challenges like child labour, school drop outs, situation of children in juvenile homes and children in conflict with law.

Earlier speaking in her address Dr Tania Goldner, Chief of UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh spoke on Convention on the Rights of the Child, and for making world fit for children, children need to be understood and protected. She added that it is obligation of State to make sure that children realise their full rights. She said that all children have rights which are equal at all times.

She in her address to the participants added that ‘you are custodians of the convention and as duty bearers need to help children realize their rights.On the issues of Children in conflict with law ‘that they should be treated as children and deserve a chance and detention should be the last resort’ she added.

Principal Secretary Snehlata Srivastava School Education spoke on the Right to Education and issue of child labour. She said that State of Madhya Pradesh is going to implement Right to Education Act from April 1, 2010.Dr J L Bose spoke on the constitution and child rights and on the responsibility of the state to ensuring protection of child rights which lies with their relatives, society and the state government. Muktesh Varshney, Director Academy of Administration, spoke at the start on the objectives of the meet.

Silent demonstration in Gwalior & Shivpuri

2010-03-01T07:18:00.000-08:00

Gwalior/Shivpuri : Hundreds of people gathered on the streets of Gwalior on Thursday to take part in a silent demonstration against female infanticide and foeticide. Holding banners with the slogans 'Save Daughters' and their mouths masked by a cloth to signify the silenced voice of the girl child, both men and women activists held hands to form a long human chain and stood in solidarity as a part of this rally. It was facilitated by Centre for Integrated Development, an non governmental organisation. Similar demonstration was held at Shivpuri district outside the collectorate. The same was facilitated by Sahyog - Support for Development. Representatives from civil society and media participated in the same (Picture is from Shivpuri).

Children most vulnerable, can be easily exploited, says Goldner

2010-02-06T15:01:00.000-08:00

In Pioneer, Bhopal Edition : Director General of Police SK Rout said that children are torchbearers of tomorrow. “We have vast majority of population which are children and young people and there are challenges of abuse, violence, trafficking and the magnitude of problem is also vast.” To respond to it, inclusive approach is needed involving all sectors of the society.

Rout was speaking at the sensitisation and review workshop of Child Welfare Officers and Special Juvenile Police Unit members here on Tuesday at Police Training and Research Institute (PTRI). He further said that in Juvenile Justice Act, it is for the first time that police officers have been given duty of social responsibility as he is first contact point with children in conflict with law, and he has called on special police juvenile units that we need to respond to it.

Speaking on the occasion Tania Goldner, chief of UNICEF Office for Madhya Pradesh said that Children are the most vulnerable group on account of their age and dependence; they can be easily exploited and abused. In case children have violated law they should be treated in a manner consistent with their sense of dignity, worth and which reinforces their respect for human rights.

KN Tiwari, Inspector General, CID welcomed the participants and thanked UNICEF for its support in sensitising police units on Juvenile Justice Act. Vijai Shukul Member MP Human Rights Commission spoke about the challenges on implementation of the act and difficult conditions of Juvenile homes in the State, He added we need to expand on infrastructure create a protective environment in the homes and treat them as our children not the ones who have done as crime.

Panel discussions were held on the issue on Children in conflict with law and Children in need of protection and care. Speaking at the panel discussion NK Singh Resident Editor, Hindustan Times spoke on the needs of media, its compulsions and how one can work with media in raising issues of this concern.

Children need to know their rights

2010-01-30T09:52:00.000-08:00

United Nations Children's Fund Madhya Pradesh Field Office Chief Tania Goldner today stressed that children need to know about their rights and ''all of us'' as stakeholders are duty-bound to inform them and help them claim their rights. Dr Goldner was addressing a prize distribution ceremony at Jawahar Bal Bhawan here. The event was organised by Child Rights Observatory (CRO) to felicitate kids who participated in a painting and essay competition held in November on the issue of child rights. More than 200 participants were present, a release said. ''It is heartening to see children painting their thoughts on their own rights. For me you are all winners not only the ones who came first. Your participation and recognition of your rights makes you winners,'' she said. CRO President Nirmala Buch spoke on the need for child articipation and said that CRO organised this competition and is taking several other initiatives to involve kids.

UNICEF-supported Risk Reduction Project in MP

2010-01-15T16:15:00.000-08:00

UNI, Bhopal : United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is supporting the Madhya Pradesh government and city-based Disaster Management Institute (DMI) in implementing a unique community-based Disaster Risk Reduction Project in ten districts of the state.

The project, which got under way in November 2008 and at present covers 100 villages across Guna, Mandsaur, Damoh, Dhar, Harda, Raisen, Sheopur, Satna, Chhindwara and Barwani, aims to cover 250 villages by 2010-end.

''It envisages reducing loss of life and related risks by making people self-resilient. This project is helping strengthen the community-coping mechanism through capacity-building at grassroots level,'' Dr Tania Goldner, Chief of UNICEF's Field Office for Madhya Pradesh, told UNI.

Being taken up on pilot basis, the project aims at building capacities at community level to manage safe havens while ensuring that basic services -- specially related to children and women (health, nutrition and education) -- are accessible, establishing community-based systems for ensuring protection of children and to facilitate preparation of district disaster management plans in the districts, the Project Plan document of the initiative said.

MP to launch missing children website

2010-01-09T03:53:00.000-08:00

The Madhya Pradesh government's Women and Child Development (WCD) department is all set to launch a website for missing children in the state which could help in identifying and tracing them. "We are planning a website for the missing children, so that they could be clearly identified," the department's deputy director and Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) in-charge Mamta Pathak told media as per the reports, adding that the initiative would help to trace and rehabilitate missing children.

The ICPS will entail integration of all the 18 different schemes for the protection of child rights and security, which would now be implemented by a single department. UNICEF is assiting the state for implementation of ICPS in the state. In addition to it other non-governmental organisations, and other departments of the state are helping in the same.The collection of data about missing children and the implementation the various schemes under an integrated ICPS has already been started with the help of National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCCD) and other child rights agencies, she said.

Madhya Pradesh is the 6th state to sign a memorandum of understanding with the central government for the implementation of ICPS, Pathak said. ICPS is a centrally sponsored "umbrella scheme" for protection of child rights and security while woman and child department would be the nodal agency to implement it.

"It would go a long way in working for the cause of children as various schemes pertaining to protection and security of children will now be implemented by one department," Women and Child Development Commissioner Gulshan Bambra said.

Class VI student makes efforts to tutor kids on hygiene

2009-12-31T07:12:00.000-08:00

Pioneer Bhopal Edition : Rajni Ojha, student of Class VI makes sure that students of her school cut their nails cut properly and drinking water is provided to the students hygienically.

Rajini is secretary of Jagmag Sena, a children club on hygiene and sanitation in a Government school at Tarawata village of Guna district.Jagmag Sena is part of a project, being implemented in 25 schools of Guna by the district administration with support from UNICEF for Madhya Pradesh. To implement this project UNICEF has also engaged an NGO Vaibhvari, which is working with teachers and children of Government schools in Guna to bring in child-to-child communication, to increased awareness on issue of hygiene and sanitation among children.

Jagmag Sena is a group of 10 children (5 girls and 5 boys) who monitor the usage of toilet facilities, washing hands, safe drinking water and other personal hygiene issues in a school. Jagmag Sena has developed a monitoring chart, which consists of the above-mentioned issues and has been painted on the wall. The member of the Jagmag Sena fill the number of children practicing safe hygiene daily. The Sena has also developed a song through which they display their concern over safe hygiene practices which motivates others to follow the same.

Programme Manager UNICEF Office for Madhya Pradesh Manish Mathur said that it was heartening to meet those children who are helping to create a positive environment in schools towards healthy behavior. They not only understand the criticality of personal hygiene and clean surroundings; they practice and demonstrate correct behavior for other children to follow.

RK Mishra, Deputy Director Rural Development Department Guna district said that the children are like messengers to the society and their families, therefore, this awareness technique has been conceived. He also said that the main aim is to change the habits and behaviour of the children towards hygiene and sanitation. “We will continue the awareness programme for the next two years so that the results can easily be seen among them,” he added.

Activity-Based Learning in MP schools

2009-12-19T20:12:00.000-08:00

Abhijit C Chandra, Bhopal, Dec 15 (UNI) : Imagine going to school sans a schoolbag! With the objectives of ensuring children's participation in the learning process and addressing absence from school, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in MP has introduced Activity Based Learning( ABL) in classes I and II with support from UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund). ABL is currently reaching out to children in benefitting students in approximately 4,000 primary schools across 50 districts of Madhya Pradesh. ''Activity-Based Learning (ABL) makes certain that kids learn at their own pace with no scope for rote learning,'' a UNICEF official told UNI here.

Attractive cards and activity generate interest and boost a child's confidence. ABL also enhances scope for the child's development in creative and communicative skills. ABL is underway at 80 schools in Vidisha district and District Education Officer Manish Verma descibed the results as satisfactory.''Children's interest in Hindi, English and Mathematics has increased,'' said District Project Coordinator Vinod Chaudhry. In the current scenario, the challenges for education at primary level are insufficient availability of teachers and addressing issues concerning multi-grade teaching and multi-level teaching situations in classrooms.

''We have a situation where, even after five years of primary education, all children are unable to reach satisfactory levels of achievement. Children drop out of schools as they fall behind in pace with other students or teachers,'' the official explained. Under ABL, the young ones learn through a self-learning experience. At the same time, teachers are in the role of facilitator where they are able to identify each child's achievement level. They involve themselves as friendly guides. Teachers are free from the pressure of not being able to address the individual learning needs of children and students are free from any fear of failure as teachers adopt a continuous evaluation procedure.ABL classes demand different pedagogy therefore it requires a change in the mindset of all- parents, teachers and officials as there are no textbooks. There are colourful activity cards and workbooks for children. Intially teachers have to work hard to establish the ABL approach, but subsequently the workload eases. As children and teachers start tracking their progress on the learning ladders, the sense of achievement is immense.

ABL classrooms require adequate space, accessible but secure storage, rich and a student-friendly environment. ABL demands higher level of creativity, commitment, mobility and responsibility from teachers. Continuous on-site support to teachers is essential.The project, which began last year, is being implemented in classes I and II and will be extended to classes III and IV in the next session

Kids at Masti Ki Pathshala

2009-12-08T13:50:00.000-08:00

Bhopal, Dec 5, 2009 : More than 300 hundred children participated in Masti Ki Pathshala organized by Aarambh, a non governmental organization with support from UNICEF held at BHEL sports club, Berkhera.

Children from Aishbagh, Bajaria, Kabadkhana, Annu Nagar, Atal Ayub Nagar, Indra Sahayat Nagar participated in the various event held to mark the day. Children participated in various track & field sports activities during the day and cultural programme like song and dance in the afternoon. Games stall were installed where children enjoyed during the day. The programme was part of events to mark 20th anniversary of Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Children release UNICEF report in Bhopal

2009-12-01T20:54:00.000-08:00

Sanjay Sharma, Bhopal, Nov 20 (IANS) For the first time in Madhya Pradesh, a clutch of children released the Unicef State of the World Children Report 2009 here Friday, praising the efforts of the government for their survival, care and protection but also calling for more focus.

Children like Pappi Khan, Madhu, Aashi, Shivani Sen, Aarti, and Sunil - from Bhopal and Hoshangabad - were delighted to get a platform to speak out. They called on the state and society to speak out against female foeticide, child abuse and provide quality education and care to all children.

“What’s needed is a supportive environment that respects women’s rights. Educating women and girls is pivotal to creating such an environment,” said one of the children. “Most of all, saving women and children’s lives requires the concerted efforts of government leaders, health specialists, civil society, communities and families”, said another.

“There has been considerable progress since the Convention on the Rights of the Child was opened for signature nearly 20 years ago though the rights of millions of children are still not respected or protected,” said Manish Mathur, officer in charge of Unicef. Twenty years after the UN adopted the treaty guaranteeing children’s rights, fewer youngsters are dying and more are going to school, says Unicef’s report.

MP becomes 1st state to top IMR for 6th time

2009-11-01T06:17:00.000-08:00

PTI from Bhopal reports that Madhya Pradesh has got the unenviable distinction of becoming the first state in the country to top the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) for the sixth time in a row. Madhya Pradesh had replaced Orissa as the state with the highest IMR in the country about six years ago and since then the former is keeping this stigma on its head. "Madhya Pradesh has the highest 70 IMR in the country in 2008 also even after it has decreased by two points in the State in comparison to 2007 when IMR was 72 at per thousand live births," says the latest bulletin of Sample Registration System (SRS) of the Registrar General of India. Orissa, which stands second in worst performing states in IMR in 2008 recorded 69 infant deaths and managed to keep the IMR below that of Madhya Pradesh consistently for the last six years. Kerala achieved the status of best performing states in IMR in 2008 where only 12 infant deaths were reported during the period followed by Tamil Nadu (31) and Maharashtra (33). The SRS bulletin also shows that Madhya Pradesh continues to be even worse in case of the female children and the IMR for girl children is 72 in the state as compared to 68 for boy children.

Madhya Pradesh asked to set up child rights body

2009-10-24T10:31:00.000-07:00

Sanjay Sharma, IANS, BHOPAL - The Child Rights Observatory - an independent child rights monitoring body comprising of civil society groups, NGOs, academics and media persons - Saturday urged the Madhya Pradesh government to set up a board or mission for child rights.

The recommendation was made in its report “State of MP’s Children”, released by Justice D.M. Dharmadhikari, the chairman of the state Human Rights Commission, along with students Priya Singh & Abhinash Mishra and UNICEF State representative for Madhya Pradesh office Hamid El Bashir at a function here.

The group, set up in November 2007, also advocated the establishment of child rights centres, clubs, forums and parliaments in schools to encourage child participation in issues of children.
The group also stressed the need of sustained participation of the local community and civil society and engaging local elected bodies in solving the issues of children.

“The state has in the last ten years progressed in literacy, education and provisioning of schooling, yet it lacks on indicators like infant mortality rate, malnourishment, basic poverty and infrastructure,” says the report adding that the state also has challenges in school dropouts and high rates of crime against children.

In his address, Justice Dharmadhikari said children in the state face many challenges and there is need to engage civil society organisations, and capitalise on their support to bring change for favour of children. Hamid El Bashir said the report will benefit policy makers, help in promoting debate on children and create a movement for development of children in the state.

Priya of class 8 and Abhinash Mishra of class 9 called upon the state to encourage their participation and provide for protection of their rights. Principal Secretary, Women and Child Development Tinoo Joshi spoke about the state government’s initiatives for child development, nutrition and protection, while Child Rights Observatory president Nirmala Buch stressed that the report calls for zero tolerance for child rights violation in the state.

Ujjain gets first medical care unit for AIDS patients

2008-04-11T21:55:00.001-07:00

Bhopal, April 7 (IANS) A HIV community care centre has been set up to provide medical help to AIDS patients in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain town, the headquarters of a district that has the second highest number of such cases in the state. Ujjain Chief Medical and Health Officer Dileep Nagar said the 10-bed medical centre, which was inaugurated last week, is a unit of Saathi, a facility providing support to HIV-positive people. It was set up with help from Hindustan Latex Family Planning Promotion Trust (HLFPPT) in association with Kripa Welfare Society, an NGO, and the Madhya Pradesh State Aids Control Society (MPSACS).

“It was badly required in a place like Ujjain which, with 351 patients, has the second highest number of AIDS cases in the state. Commercial capital Indore takes the lead with 564 cases,” Manish, who represents Ujjain’s network of HIV-positive people, told IANS. The network, with about 130 members, provides support and counselling for HIV-positive people across the state.
The number of AIDS affected people in the state, according to MPSACS figures, increased from one in 1988 to 2,382 by the end of 2007.

The figures compiled by the MPSACS reveal that 91.7 percent patients acquire the deadly virus through sexual transmission and two percent through blood transfusion. “What is worrying is that AIDS is no longer confined to urban areas. I have patients from villages, even remote hamlets, where the disease has spread due to lack of awareness,” said a doctor.

The doctor claimed she had come across HIV patients from small towns like Khandwa, Khargone, Badwani and Shajapur. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. Several cases, mainly from rural areas, go unreported in the state”, says Prashant Malaiya, MPSACS deputy director. NGOs working in Indore, Ujjain, Jabalpur, Rewa, Bhopal, Gwalior, Sagar, Hoshangabad and Morena, claim the number of AIDS victims in these districts is far higher than official figures. Various surveys have pointed out that people between 31 and 40 form the largest group of HIV-affected people. They have also found that 72 percent of AIDS patients in Madhya Pradesh are men.
“The centre will go a long way in providing care to HIV-positive people. However, we need to sensitise more people, spread knowledge and dispel fear associated with HIV to fight the stigma attached to the disease,” said Unicef official Anil Gulati.

India tries new ways to reach its underfed children

2008-04-11T21:55:00.000-07:00

By Jonathan Allen
BADARWAS, India, March 18 (Reuters) - A couple of months ago, Sheela Adivasi's infant son fell sick and his eyes filled with pus. By the time the infection cleared up, Deepak's pupils had turned a pearly white. He is now permanently blind.It did not help matters that Deepak is malnourished, as are half of all young children in India. His belly is swollen, his dry skin speckled with dark dots, and his hair is thin and yellowing. Had he not been so starved of vitamins, he probably would have suffered only an itchy but harmless bout of pink eye.Belatedly, he is getting some nutrients in a special clinic for malnourished children in Badarwas, a tiny town about an hour's drive from his mud-walled home in a village in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.The clinic, a concrete room filled with a dozen beds and prone to powercuts, is part of India's latest attempt to reduce a malnutrition rate twice that of sub-Saharan Africa. For now, Deepak is far from the only child being reached too late.It is a problem with "dire consequences for morbidity, mortality, productivity and economic growth," a World Bank report said in 2005, and shows little signs of fading even as India's economy booms.Born underweight and then underfed during the crucial early stages of development, millions of Indian children grow up shorter, weaker and less smart than their better fed peers.They end up less productive workers, too, costing India about 3 percent of national income, the bank said. The problem looks unlikely to disappear for at least the next couple of decades.

GOOD ADVICE
The nutrition centres, and measures such as paying pregnant women to give birth in a clinic rather than at home, are part of the government's National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).It was started in 2005 to bring health services to people used to a choice between pawning jewellery for doctor's fees or simply suffering.The scheme is intended to plug gaps in an older programme that failed to reach children in the most critical first two years of life, educate mothers about nutrition and reign in corruption which meant free food handouts went missing.In Deepak's case, the difference some well-timed good advice could have made is obvious. In the 18 months since his birth, no food passed his lips until he arrived at the nutrition centre, according to his mother. She did not realise this was a problem."He only drinks milk," Sheela said as she sat sweating under a motionless ceiling fan as Deepak lay in her lap in torn shorts and a grubby jacket.The registration book at the centre is filled with the purple thumbprints of illiterate, unschooled mothers like Sheela. She does not know her age -- a doctor, trying to be helpful, pulled open her mouth, looked at her teeth, and guessed about 25.After marrying in her late teens Sheela left behind her village and moved in with her husband's family. She dislikes her mother-in-law, who she says has no interest in giving grandmotherly advice.Workers at the centre will try to teach Sheela how best to care for her son, paying her 35 rupees (nearly $1) a day and providing meals to compensate for her lost labourer's income.Several times a day, Deepak sips a sweet mixture of ground puffed rice and sugar dissolved in milk with a little vegetable oil. Older children move on to fruit, eggs and lentils.For Kasumal Adivasi, sitting a few beds away, the centre was a revelation. Like Sheela, she felt there was no one in her husband's village she could turn to for advice.After 12 days at the centre, Tunda, her 2-year-old son, still has a distended stomach and a slightly grumpy disposition, but at least he is able to stand up again with his mother's help."I promise, promise, promise to remember what you told me," she told a nurse, before reciting some of the dietary tips she has learnt at the centre. She smiled with gratitude and relief, her hand resting on her pregnant belly.

STILL GAPS
The Madhya Pradesh government adopted the nutrition centres after liking what it saw at a pilot centre set up in the state by UNICEF. There are now more than 60 in Madhya Pradesh, and they are spreading to other states as part of the NRHM.But UNICEF staff warn that the limited beds at the nutrition clinics are far from an end in themselves. They are a last resort, taking in only the most dangerously undernourished children. Two weeks later, they are discharged, most still malnourished, but no longer quite so at risk of dying."There are still big gaps in the guidelines," said Hamid El-Bashir, the UNICEF representative for Madhya Pradesh.Under the rural health mission, health workers are being asked to help check malnutrition before it reaches such a bleak stage, but in places like Madhya Pradesh where healthy children are in a minority, locals can become inured to the signs."His hair just hasn't been washed," said one young village worker when her attention was brought to a young child with yellowing frizz on his scalp and scaly skin.Some, like Biraj Patnaik, an advisor to the Supreme Court on nutrition, think good advice only goes so far, and India's top priority is fixing its graft-tainted food distribution system."Across the country women are rationing their own food, feeding their babies at their own personal cost," he said. "There's absolute hunger out there."UNICEF's El-Bashir thinks fortified biscuits or similar so-called ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTF) used in some famine-hit African countries could be part of the solution.Convincing India's government could be tricky though as it likes to promote traditional Indian food staples grown and cooked locally, saying it is cheap, creates jobs and is less prone to graft."RUTF has been a real revolution," El-Bashir said. "India cannot just say no." (Editing by Simon Denyer and Megan Goldin)

Child welfare NGOs come together

2008-03-09T14:47:00.000-07:00

The Hindu

- Need to help the Government address child issues

- ‘Public campaign for child rights could affect political manifestos’

The Child Rights Observatory Madhya Pradesh (CROMP), a society promoted by UNICEF to create public awareness and build up a campaign for child rights, received support from a large number of NGOs at a meeting held here over the weekend to build linkages and explore the possibilities of cooperation.

CROMP, the only organisation of its kind in Asia, is headed by former State Chief Secretary Nirmala Buch. Prominent persons from the field of education, social work and media are among the founder members.

The CROMP deliberations were attended by many voluntary and social organisations including UNICEF, National Law Institute University, Samarthan, NIWCYD, Arambh, Muskan, SOS, Children’s Village, CARD, Parvarish, Umeed, Deerghayu, Asha Niketan, Sangini, United Reformers Organisation, DFID and Digdarshika.

Speaking on the occasion, UNICEF State Representative Hamid El Bashir said CROMP should act as a catalyst in bringing together all NGOs working for the cause of children. He stressed the need to work and help the Government address issues like sex selection, street children, school enrolment of children living in slums, disability, child labour, children’s health, aggression and violence among adolescents.

Word of caution

Dr. Bashir had a word of caution against NGOs lacking a track record in terms of performance and said there should be a system for accreditation of NGOs. He said a public campaign for child rights could even compel political parties to include the issue in their election manifestos.

Ms. Buch announced that CROMP would be producing a citizens’ report on the status of children in Madhya Pradesh. This would be endorsed by NGOs. She said the voice of the Child Rights Observatory would be the collective voice of the NGOs.

Malnutrition stalks Madhya Pradesh children

2007-12-18T05:38:00.000-08:00

A severely malnourished child at nutritional rehabilitation centre, Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh. He is with his mother. 60 % of children in the state in between of age 0 - 5 years are malnourished. Malnutrition stalk Madhya Pradesh children despite schemes to improve the services of anganwadis and nutrition centres. The state may be having about one lakh children who are severely malnourished and if they are not in centres like this 50 % may die ?

Bhopal wakes up to greetings by children

2007-12-09T17:45:00.000-08:00

All India Radio (AIR) listeners in Bhopal Sunday morning woke up to a pleasant surprise when they heard children anchoring various early morning programmes.

The children were invited by AIR on the occasion of the International Children Day of Broadcasting, declared by UNICEF.

Observed on the second Sunday of December each year since 1992, broadcasters air programmes for, about or by the children around the world on this day.

The day provides a unique opportunity for children broadcasters to use the medium. One important part of the initiative is that children themselves decide how and in what way they will participate.

'Many (children) who have been part to this earlier wait for the day and many new join in. It is an interesting experience for some and boost their confidence', said an AIR official.

'Radio is already making a comeback as a major source of entertainment. Such an attempt by children would further add to its glory as who doesn't wants to listen or experience the talent of children', said Laxmi Sharma, a schoolteacher.

'Radio is the most powerful medium even today and such an opportunity would encourage children to speak about themselves. It would also teach them about communicating with a larger audience. And above all, we the adults would also be able to understand children better who otherwise remain hesitant in expressing themselves', said SP Shukla, one of the participant's parent.

'This day gives one more opportunity to children to express and voice their opinion freely in line with Article 12 of Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)', UNICEF' Communication Officer Anil Gulati told IANS.

By Sanjay Sharma, IANS

UNICEF launches mobile schools in Madhya Pradesh

2007-11-20T09:30:00.000-08:00

Bhopal, Nov 20 (IANS) Unicef launched 22 mobile primary schools for children of migrant workers of Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh.The primary aim of such mobile schools is to encourage to attend school those children who normally drop out when their parents leave home in search of work in other states.

'This initiative with the help of district administration and support of local non-governmental organisation, namely Lok Vikas Evam Anusandhan Trust, will help retain in school children who otherwise get dropped out,' said Dr Hamid El Bashir, State Representative of Unicef, after the launch ceremony in Jhabua, which was also attended by District Collector R K Pathak and local legislator Madho Singh.

The mobile schools will have all the basic requirements of a normal school and will be housed in tents.Unicef plans to have 100 such schools by 2008 end.

'Since the literacy rate, mainly of females, is much lower due to migration problem and most of the children could not even complete their primary education, mobile schools are expected to check dropouts to a great extent,' said a Unicef official.

'The idea is to facilitate education of children of migrant labourers even when they are out so that they can continue in their local school when they come back to their native place. Their attendance and other registers will be deposited with the local school on their come back, and they would be able to continue their education,' the official added. At present the mobile schools will target 650 children who migrate with their parents to Gujarat for work. The tribals of the Jhabua district migrate from their villages to Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra for their livelihood every year. About 85 percent population of the district is tribal and 47 percent people live below the poverty line. The literacy rate, according to 2001 census, is 36.87 percent but the female literacy is just four percent.

Unicef has provided for the school tents, school materials, salary of teachers, course material and even trained teachers in partnership with the district administration.

Fategarh Health Centre in Guna, MP

2007-11-08T15:08:00.000-08:00

Fategarh is a panchayat village about two hours drive on make shift road from the district headquarters of Guna. The panchayat village lies in Madhya Pradesh but borders districts of Rajasthan.

The village has a sector sub health centre. Ninety deliveries, took place in this health centre, in June 2007, almost all of them are from this nearby villages. This was not the case a year and half before (before December 4, 2006, the day when this centre was revitalized). Before this date, all deliveries used to happen at home and there were number of maternal deaths in the area, which was revealed by Maternal and Prenatal Death Inquiry and Response or the social audit of maternal deaths in the Bamori block, which includes Fategarh panchayat.

Before December 2006, the centre offered only immunization services like any other sub health centre in the state. Heath facilities like labor room facility for pregnant women of Fategarh and nearby villages was quite far and accessibility to health services was an issue. This was one of the reasons for maternal deaths in the area. It is here that UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) came in and supported the District administration of Guna, Madhya Pradesh, to help make this centre a round the clock mother and child care service delivery centre. UNICEF not only supported the district by providing them with skilled birth attendants, but also trained them in integrated management of newborn and childhood illness.

The centre, as of now, caters for eleven villages. Niranjana and Kamlsa, auxiliary nurses midwives at the centre feel elated when they see the progress, but they sometimes get exhausted when they have to undertake seven to eight deliveries a day; thanks to the increased awareness and schemes by the state.

The centre also undertakes awareness programmes in remote areas and shares information on various schemes, like Janani Suraksha Yojana, initiated by the state government to promote institutional delivery with the community members. This has helped in creating awareness and demand for the need of the institutional deliveries.

"I felt much protected and secure when I came here for my delivery" says Shravani, a mother of three. Her first two deliveries were at home, but for the third one the village 'dai' got her to the sub health centre.

Dr Hamid El Bashir, State Representative, UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh, adds that children and women lives can be saved and this can happen with improvement in both access and quality of health services through such interventions. Fategarh model of revitalization of the sub centre to provide basic health care services, including conducting deliveries, has inspired and has been replicated in six more institutions in Guna.

Anil Gulati

Pneumonia still kills millions every year

2007-11-05T16:08:00.000-08:00

Pneumonia kills millions every year, children in particular. 15 countries account for 75% of childhood pneumonia cases world wide; the number of cases in India is the highest. A healthy child has many natural defences that protect it from pneumonia.

A RECENT, joint UNICEF-WHO report has drawn attention to the scourge of pneumonia. Pneumonia kills millions of people, especially children, ever year. It kills more children than any other disease - more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. Thus it calls for immediate attention on the part of all policy makers in the area of public health. Pneumonia causes almost 1 in 5 out of the under-five deaths worldwide and the death of more than 2 million children each year. The said report states that fifteen countries account for three quarters of childhood pneumonia cases world wide; in India, the number of cases is the highest.

Pneumonia is an inflammation of the lungs caused by an infection. Many different organisms can cause it, including bacteria, viruses, and fungi. Children with pneumonia may manifest a range of symptoms, depending on their age and the cause of infection. Bacterial pneumonia usually causes severe illness in children, giving rise to high fever and rapid breathing. Viral infections, however, often gain gradually and may worsen over time. Some common symptoms of pneumonia in children and infants include rapid or difficult breathing, cough, fever, chills, headaches, loss of appetite and wheezing. Children under five with severe cases of pneumonia may struggle to breathe, their chests moving in or retracting, during inhalation. Young infants may suffer convulsions, unconsciousness, hypothermia, lethargy and feeding problems.

A healthy child has many natural defences that protect its lungs from the invading pathogens that cause pneumonia. However, children and infants with compromised immune systems have weak defences. Undernourished children, particularly those not exclusively breastfed or with inadequate zinc intake, are at a higher risk of contracting pneumonia. Similarly, children and infants suffering from other illnesses, such as AIDS or measles, are more likely to contract pneumonia. Environmental factors, such as living in crowded homes and exposure to parental smoking or indoor air pollution, may also have a role to play in increasing the children’s susceptibility to pneumonia and its severe consequences.

Prompt treatment of pneumonia with a full course of appropriate antibiotics is life-saving. But it needs medicare, which is a challenge in the developing world. There are published guidelines for diagnosing and treating pneumonia in community settings. But preventing children from contracting pneumonia in the first place is essential for reducing child deaths. Key prevention measures include promoting adequate nutrition (including breastfeeding and zinc intake), raising immunization rates and reducing indoor air pollution. Because pneumonia kills more children than any other illness, any effort to improve overall child survival must treat the reduction of pneumonia-related death toll as a priority. And preventing children from contracting pneumonia in the first place is critical to reducing their death toll.

Anil Gulati
Source - www.merinews.com

ऐसा अख़बार जिसमें सभी 'बाल पत्रकार'

2007-10-09T09:34:00.000-07:00

मंगलवार, 09 अक्तूबर, 2007, फ़ैसल मोहम्मद अली, बीबीसी संवाददाता, भोपाल

न्यूज लेटर की ख़बरें कई मामलों में अपनी छाप भी छोड़ रही हैं
मध्य प्रदेश में एक स्वयंसेवी संस्था ने 'बच्चों की पहल' नामक त्रिमासिक अख़बार शुरू किया है. ख़ास बात ये है कि इस अख़बार के सभी रिपोर्टर स्कूली बच्चे हैं. होशंगाबाद ज़िले की सोहागपुर तहसील में यूनीसेफ़ की पहल पर दलित संघ नामक स्थानीय स्वयंसेवी संस्था ने यह पहल की है.

तीन कमरों वाले स्कूलों में जहाँ कक्षा एक से आठ तक की पढ़ाई होती है, वहाँ पढ़ने वाले इन बच्चों का उत्साह देखते ही बनता है. वे अपना परिचय कुछ इस अंदाज़ में देते हैं. “मेरा नाम ज्योति है. मैं आठवीं में पढ़ती हूँ और दलित संघ की पत्रकार हूँ...या “ मैं शिवकुमार हूँ और मैं पत्रकार हूँ...”

उत्साह

इन परिचयों को किसी खेल या नाटक की रिहर्सल का हिस्सा समझने वाले आगंतुकों को वहाँ मौजूद शिक्षक और कभी खुद बच्चे बताते हैं कि वे वाकई पत्रकार हैं. हम भविष्य के लिए एक ऐसा वर्ग तैयार करना चाहते हैं जो अपनी बात निडरता से सत्तासीन लोगों के सामने कह सके

गोपाल नारायण आवटे, संपादक

हिंदी में छपने वाले चार पन्नों के ‘बच्चों की पहल’ न्यूज लेटर के दो अंक अब तक प्रकाशित हो चुके हैं और तीसरा ज़ल्द ही आने वाला है.

यूनिसेफ़ की मध्य प्रदेश इकाई के प्रमुख हामिद अल बशीर कहते हैं कि यह प्रोजेक्ट समाज में बदलाव के लिए बच्चों की पहल है.

संस्था के प्रवक्ता अनिल गुलाटी के अनुसार यूनिसेफ़ ने इस न्यूज़ लेटर के लिए दलित संघ को ख़ुद से इसीलिए जोड़ा क्योंकि संस्था एक ऐसे वर्ग के लिए काम कर रही है जो हमेशा सबसे पीछे की पंक्ति में खड़ा मिलता है.

संपादक गोपाल नारायण आवटे का कहना है कि मौजूदा समाचार माध्यमों में आजकल गाँव से जुड़ी ख़बरें लगभग नगण्य हैं, ख़ासतौर पर दलितों की रोज़मर्रा की ज़िंदगी से जुड़ी ख़बरें जिन्हें समाज के सामने लाने में इस न्यूज लेटर से मदद मिलेगी.

यह पूछे जाने पर कि संवाददाताओं के तौर पर बच्चों का ही चयन क्यों किया गया, आवटे कहते हैं कि पहले तो ग्रामीण दलितों के बीच से नियमित तौर पर ख़बरें भेजने के लिए पढ़े-लिखे लोगों की कमी थी और दूसरे वह भविष्य के लिए एक ऐसा वर्ग तैयार करना चाहते हैं जो अपनी बात निडरता से सत्तासीन लोगों के सामने कह सके.

नई दुनिया
‘बच्चों की पहल’ ने ग्रामीण बच्चों के लिए ख़बरें लिखने के तरीके, फ़ोटोग्राफी और कार्टूनों की एक नई दुनिया ही खोल दी है.
नवलगाँव के चौकीदार के बेटे दयाशंकर जहाँ अख़बार के लिए संवाददाता और कार्टूनिस्ट दोनों की भूमिका निभा रहे हैं, वहीं मज़दूर के बेटे हरिओम अपने विचार कार्टून की आड़ी-तिरछी लकीरों के माध्यम से सामने रखने लगे हैं.मैं चिंतित हूँ कि कहीं बार-बार समस्याओं की बात उठाने से बच्चे शक्तिशाली लोगों को अपना दुश्मन न बना लें, शिक्षक तरवर सिंह पटेल

होशंगाबाद के सोहागपुर तहसील के दूरदराज़ इलाकों में रह रहे ये किशोर संवाददाता अपनी रिपोर्टें, लेख और प्रकाशन के लिए दूसरी सामग्रियां दलित संघ कार्यकर्ताओं या डाक के माध्यम से सोहागपुर भेजते हैं. जहाँ ख़बरों के संकलन और संपादन के बाद उन्हें प्रकाशित किया जाता है.

दलित संघ कार्यकर्ता सुनील कहते हैं कि न्यूज़ लेटर की ख़बरें कई मामलों में अपनी छाप भी छोड़ रही हैं. मसलन गुंदरई स्कूल में खेल मैदान न होने की ख़बर प्रकाशित होने के बाद मुख्यमंत्री ने जिल़ा कलेक्टर को इस बाबत निर्देश दिए.

मगर जहाँ दलित सशक्तीकरण, बच्चों में सामयिक विषयों पर होनेवाली चर्चाएं, उनके बढ़ते शब्दकोष और अभिव्यक्ति में आया पैनापन खुशी का विषय है, वहीं शिक्षक तरवर सिंह पटेल चिंतित हैं कि कहीं बार-बार समस्याओं की बात उठाने से बच्चे शक्तिशाली लोगों को अपना दुश्मन न बना लें.

लेकिन मास्टर साहब की चिंताओं से बेख़बर स्वभाव से शर्मीली मीना जहाँ नारी अधिकार पर अपनी कविता सुना रही हैं, वहीं पूजा रघुवंशी ‘भगवान ने पेट किस लिए दिया है, पायजामा बाँधने के लिए’ जैसे चुटकुले सुनाकर ठहाके लगवा रही है.

Hungry and Dying

2007-10-07T16:25:00.000-07:00

ANNIE ZAIDI Frontline

Hunger and malnutrition stalk Madhya Pradesh villages despite schemes to improve the services of anganwadis and nutrition centres.
HUNGER is unpalatable. For a government that wishes to assert that it is not callous, it is particularly so. But hunger, with a capital H, is a pill that millions of people in Madhya Pradesh continue to swallow.

In 2005 and 2006, Frontline reported acute malnutrition from Sheopur and Shivpuri districts in Madhya Pradesh. Since then, there has been some change: new schemes have been announced; the recruitment policy for anganwadi workers has changed; there is a new menu for the anganwadis; and more Nutrition Rehabilitation Centres (NRCs) are being opened. Anganwadis are Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) centres.

However, it would be wise to keep in mind that not all changes have been positive. According to the 2005-2006 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3), the percentage of underweight children in Madhya Pradesh increased from 54 in 1998-99 to 60, and the percentage of wasted (extremely malnourished) children from 20 to 33.

POOR COMPENSATION

Many changes over the past decade have pushed villagers who once had enough to eat into a spiral of food insecurity and the uncertain arms of the public distribution system (PDS). There appears to be a direct link between access to forests and hunger in tribal hamlets. Madhya Pradesh has 29 national parks and reserved forest areas, and each of them has meant displacement and deprivation for the tribal people. Take Balharpur village in Shivpuri for instance, less than an hour’s drive from Shivpuri town.

About eight years ago, its residents, most of them belonging to the Sahariya tribe, were moved out of the Madhav National Park and dumped upon a stony, non-irrigated tract of land near the highway. Earlier, they had lived close to a river and had water for both farming and drinking.

During the non-farming season, they collected and sold tendu leaves, herbs and honey to be able to buy things needed to supplement their diet. Each family had cows and goats. While moving, the villagers set their cattle free near the Balhar Mata temple in the forest. They were certain they would not have access to grazing land in the New Balharpur village. They were right.

NO ROOF OVERHEAD

Today, the village has neither fields nor cattle nor jobs. What it does have is people like Makkobai. Her husband and one son already dead and confronted with the prospect of losing her other son and daughter-in-law, she was forced to sell off her roof.

Each family was given built houses, without toilets or taps, when they relocated; rough slabs of stone placed in a lattice formed the roof. Makkobai sold these stone slabs for Rs.2,500. She sleeps in other people’s houses.

Makkobai should have been entitled to a health card, issued under the Deen Dayal Antyodaya Upchar Yojna, which would have provided the family free medical treatment worth Rs.20,000. But she does not have one. Another widow, Bisna, shrugs off the suggestion of visiting hospitals. “What will the doctor do? There’s nothing to eat anyway.” Like others in her village, she is almost entirely dependent on subsidised PDS rations. Everybody does not have a “yellow card”, the Antyodaya ration card, which marks the Sahariyas as the poorest of the poor. The Sahariyas are entitled to them, being a Primitive Tribal Group. Not surprisingly, malnutrition amongst the children is plain to see, even to the untrained eye.

They also claim that the Guna Grameen Kshetriya Bank allows each family to withdraw only Rs.8,000 of the Rs.20,000 given as compensation for displacement. And most of it has been spent repaying loans taken at interest rates as high as 100 per cent. The rest of the money was set aside for “land development” purposes.

The very phrase “land development” makes villagers spit in anger. Jamna, an elderly widow, told Frontline: “What are you supposed to do with your stomach until this land gets developed? And how will the land be developed without water? All we have is one functional hand pump.”

The men have been forced to migrate to places such as Ghati-Gaon near Gwalior, where there is work in the stone quarries. They live a whole month in the quarries and return with no more than Rs.500, and often with tuberculosis as well. There are 26 widows out of a total adult female population of 87.

Another village in Shivpuri district, Amola, which was displaced in August 2006 to make way for the Manikheda dam project, presents a gloomier face. It is now home to Lakshmi, the six-month-old baby who has just returned from the NRC in Shivpuri. She was discharged after 14 days but remains a “grade four case” – severe malnutrition that, if untreated, will lead to death.

The village has no pucca houses, and the administration did not provide toilets either. The Sahariya women are distraught since people of other castes or communities refuse to let them use their fields. They even threaten to bury the women alive if they attempt to enter their fields.

Even the five quintals of grain, which was promised as interim relief for displacement, did not materialise. Some families got pattas but others were already farming the same strip of land. Most of the villagers migrate or work for contractors, filling dumpers with sand for Rs.20 a day, or walk to the nearest forest area and cut wood.

LOSS OF LIVELIHOOD

A young woman, Kusna, threw an axe and a small bundle near this correspondent’s feet and sat down. She had been collecting wood all day, which she sold in the nearest town market for Rs.30. “The bus fare cost me Rs.10. What was left bought me this bundle of leaves, which I will cook tonight as vegetables. Earlier, we could collect gum, honey, herbs. Now what?”

Now, there is the iffy dependence on rations and the struggle to obtain “yellow cards”. Even this battle is an uphill one. Recently, the panchayat secretary was suspended after he was arrested for irregularities. He had allegedly tried to sell Below Poverty Line (BPL) cards for Rs.500 each.

The day Frontline visited Amola, an unidentified man had dropped in earlier, claiming to be the new secretary. While he was yet to take charge, the villagers alleged that he was already asking for bribes: Rs.10 a card. Little wonder then that as budgets for schemes grow, so does food insecurity and the great corruption initiative. In Sheopur district, there were instances of gross irregularities concerning the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). Frontline found such irregularities in Patalgarh village in 2006 too, where several children died of malnutrition.

According to Uma Chaturvedi, a fellow of the Right to Food Campaign for Sheopur, there are fresh attempts to fudge cards. “For example, in Naya Gaon in Vijaypur block, which is one of the 28 villages displaced for the Kuno National Park, people worked for and were paid for two to four days on an average, but all the cards have entries stating ‘77 days’. The villagers met the District Collector to complain about the resultant embezzlement in May, but so far no action has been taken.”

She added that in other villages in Sheopur, such as Rohni and Ranipura, people are demanding wages pending since March, or compensatory unemployment allowance, but, again, to no avail.

MAKKOBAI WITH HER surviving son. She had to sell off the stone slabs that formed her roof and now sleeps in other people's houses.

Sachin Kumar Jain, who works with the Right to Food Campaign, admits that the State government at least has the decency not to turn a blind eye to hunger. “Under pressure from the media, the Supreme Court and civil society groups, the government acknowledged the problem; even the bureaucracy has shown some political sensitivity. Yet, hunger is a problem even in Budhni [in Sehore district], which is part of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s constituency.”

According to reports by Raju Kumar who works with Vikas Samvad, Bhim Kot, one of the villages in Budhni block, is rife with malnourished children. “We weighed the children and found that 24 out of 25 were malnourished. Nineteen years later, and despite having corresponded with the C.M., they still don’t have an anganwadi or access to health care.”

Despite policy changes, major loopholes remain. Safe drinking water is not considered a part of crucial nutritional needs. In villages such as Kairi Chowki in Raisen district, there are 10 hand pumps, of which only one functions.

There is no anganwadi in Kairi Chowki either, which is also part of the Chief Minister’s parliamentary constituency (he was a Lok Sabha member when he took over as Chief Minister). The nearest ICDS centre is about 3 km away.

Here, when the new ration cards were released, many people found their names struck off the BPL list. Among them were people such as Munshi Lal, who is in his 80s but receives no longer the old-age pension.

In the neighbouring hamlet of Dhoop-Ghata, things are better. Many of the families have a cow or a goat and some chickens, and they are peacefully allowed to graze their animals, without interference from the forest administration. There is an anganwadi and the worker is efficient. The nurse makes regular visits and the children do not appear to be severely undernourished.

Even so, life is terribly hard. The women set out at 3 a.m. They walk to Abdullaganj, the largest market in the area, to sell a bundle of firewood, for as little as Rs.40. Then they walk back, cook the noon meal and start walking again – to the forest to collect wood.

A visit to the NRC in Shivpuri district is both heartrending and educative, in the context of the demographics of hunger. Nearly all the mothers and children admitted are Sahariyas. Phuliya, a woman from Khaniyadana block, had brought along her two-year-old girl Choti – all skin and bones. While she acknowledged that she got her full ration regularly, there was not much she could do to help her own child: all she could feed the baby was dal and roti.

The NRC officials claim that they also have a hard time keeping the mothers in hospital for 15 days. Most women are worried about other children left behind at home. In the attempt to save one, they dare not risk losing the rest.

The Director of the Department of Women and Child Welfare, Kalpana Shrivastava, agrees that the main problem is that whatever the State provides can only be supplementary nutrition, whether it is through ICDS or mid-day meals. It is hard to tackle malnutrition if hunger is a chronic problem.

The State has been trying. From only daliya or panjeeri, the menu at anganwadis now includes poha, laddoo and halwa-puri. The process is also decentralised, with the money for supplies being sent directly to a joint account between the anganwadi worker and the local mothers’ committee. There are also attempts to “celebrate” every Tuesday as Mangal Divas, wherein pregnant women will be treated to a godh-bharai, birthdays will be marked, and so on.

Pockets of chronic malnutrition will be allotted Rs.6 a child, instead of Rs.2, whereby children will get three meals at the anganwadi. The worker and helper will also be paid extra.

Kalpana Shrivastava also claims that, in compliance with the Supreme Court’s orders, all ICDS centres sanctioned in 2007 will be made functional by the end of September. “The new nutrition policy will make a difference, but things take time to fall into place.” Organisations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund are also focussing on nutritional rehabilitation. Dr. Manohar Agnani, former Collector of Shivpuri, who was instrumental in setting up the model NRC in 2006, is now a consultant for UNICEF.

TREAT THE CAUSE

The target is to get 100 NRCs up and running by the end of the year and 313 by 2008. However, UNICEF State Representative Hamid El-Bashir agrees that there is a need to scratch the surface. “The ICDS is an excellent programme; it is wide-reaching and ambitious. But the State government also needs to look at income and unemployment. We can treat the symptoms, not the cause.”

Yet, the NRCs are a much-needed measure in a State, which confronts the certainty of a definite number of hunger-related deaths every year. Even if the situation is improving slowly, it still looks very bad once you translate percentages into numbers. According to the 10th survey of the Bal Sanjivani Abhiyan in the State, 47.5 per cent of children under six are malnourished, of whom 0.67 per cent suffer from severe malnourishment.

This is down by 0.11 per cent from the ninth survey, but, as Dr. Agnani points out, “with an average rate of 30 per cent mortality [for the severely malnourished], this means that hundreds of children will die this year. In Sheopur district [which accounts for 2.56 per cent of the severe category], up to 600 children could die.”

It is a frightening fact that, despite the best efforts of concerned groups and recent policy changes, within a year, 600 children in a single district will have died because there was not enough food to eat.

Sachin Kumar Jain offers another sombre reminder – most of the dead and dying will be Dalit or Adivasi tribal children. “Do you know why the Sahariyas are a Primitive Tribal Group? Amongst other parameters, it is the fact that their population is decreasing or stagnant. It is true that they bear more children, but it is also true that most of the children die. This is the result of a policy of exclusion. Schemes are only a petty compensation for depriving people of their rights.”

‘Shaktiman project’ focused on tribals will cover 1,000 villages

2007-09-30T05:10:00.000-07:00

Nourishing lives: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan along with actor Mukesh Khanna of TV serial ‘Shaktiman’ fame and a child freed from malnourishment at the launch of the State Government’s ‘Project Shaktiman’ in Hoshangabad district.
KESLA (MADHYA PRADESH): Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan has affirmed his Government’s commitment to ensuring that not a single child remains malnourished in the State.

This was emphasised by the Chief Minister while launching the Shaktiman Project in the heavily forested Kesala block of Hoshangabad district over the weekend. The new initiative is aimed at addressing the critical issue of malnourishment in the predominantly tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh.

The project would initially cover 1,000 villages in 38 development blocks of 19 districts.

Addressing a huge gathering of villagers, even as the audience braved a cloudburst and remained seated drenched in rain, the Chief Minister said effective measures had been taken to end discrimination against the girl child. He called for greater participation by women in the decision-making process. The State Government had initiated a number of schemes and programmes to bring women on a firmer footing, he said, dwelling at length on various initiatives taken by the Government for women’s empowerment.

The Chief Minister said Madhya Pradesh was ranking low on the malnourishment front but focused efforts in the recent past had started showing positive results. He said 0.4 per cent children are severely malnourished in the State. The figure earlier stood at 5 per cent, he added.

Women and Child Development Minister Kusum Mehdale said that under the Shaktiman Project, the first of its kind in the country, the daily expenditure per head for providing nutritious diet to children would be Rs. 6 against the normal Rs.2 being spent by anganwadis.

Hamid El Bashir, State Representative at the UNICEF Office for Madhya Pradesh, said UNICEF salutes all those involved in tackling the problem of malnutrition. Stressing the need for focused intervention in the least developed parts of the State, particularly the tribal areas, Dr. Bashir said that initially 1,000 villages were being targeted but the project should expand to all areas.

TV star Mukesh Khanna, who played the popular role of Shaktiman in a serial by the same name said children have great potential and they should be able to use it to the fullest .

UNICEF opens art gallery

2007-09-14T19:45:00.001-07:00

The Hindu, September 15, 2007

“Initiative is out-of-box thinking”

BHOPAL: The UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh has taken the initiative to create an art-cum-photography gallery at its Bhopal premises to promote art and photography for social change.

The State Principal Secretary for Women and Child Development, Prashant Mehta, inaugurated the Art Gallery at the UNICEF office here on Thursday by declaring open an exhibition of photographic images by Prakash Hatvalne, a photo journalist.

Speaking on this occasion, Mr. Mehta observed, “this initiative is out-of-box thinking”. It is different and would bring UNICEF closer to society, he said, adding that the Gallery would provide a platform to artists to influence change in the larger interest of children and women.

Dr. Hamid El Bashir, State Representative at the UNICEF Office for Madhya Pradesh, said that through art we can challenge social stigmas and barriers. He said the idea was to involve artists in building a vision for a more egalitarian society.

Mr. Hatvalne has worked for more than two decades with national and international media. His exhibition at the UNICEF office includes collection of photographs depicting the Ramanami sect, and his work among children and women, especially tribals. His photographs will be on display up to September 22.

UNICEF opens art gallery

2007-09-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

Villagers script their own progress in Madhya Pradesh

2007-09-11T09:03:00.001-07:00

Sanjay Sharma

Fourteen-year-old Mamta had to abandon her studies after Class 5 because her village in Madhya Pradesh did not have the facilities. Three years later, however, the story has changed - Mamta can continue her studies with a middle school opening up near her home thanks to a new initiative where the residents themselves identify their needs.

As part of the village planning programme started by Unicef, the district administration and some NGOs, Mamta's village Kolhari in Shivpuri district now has a middle school where she has been admitted in Class 6 this year.

The project involves the community using norms of participatory rural appraisal techniques; villagers themselves chalk out the needs of their hamlets and apprise the government about the requirements.

The programme, started initially in Guna and Shivpuri districts, has wrought a profound change in the lives of many villagers.

"After the introduction of village planning in Kolhari, we have got an all-weather road and a series of hand pumps. Since our village has no toilets and most diseases in the village are spread as a result of open defecation, we have now applied for toilets, which we hope to get soon," an enthusiastic Mamta said.

The women in the village have also applied for anganwadi centres so that they can provide better care to their children.

Under the programme, social maps are prepared to assess the distribution of available resources in the village. Household surveys are then conducted to collect basic information about the village, the community and the needs of children, primarily in areas of health, education, nutrition, drinking water and sanitation.

Information is also sought on the socio-economic condition of people.

The data collected is used to prepare developmental plans for presentation and approval in a special 'gram sabha' (village) meeting. Then, the plans are passed on to the district administration for implementation.

The areas chosen for rural planning include birth registration, maternal and infant mortality, maternity benefits (including regular health check-ups, immunisation), breast feeding, malnutrition, health and sanitation, controlling diarrhoea, decreasing child marriages, consumption of iodised salt, supply of drinking water and personal hygiene. Special stress is given on female child education.

"The programme requires villagers to meet twice a month at the village community hall where each hamlet formulates its own plan for development and analyses the progress. Then they submit an application with the district administration, which sanctions funds and directs the concerned department to implement the works", said Umesh Vashisht, convener of the Centre For Integrated Development, an NGO working on the project.

"One woman volunteer has been appointed in each village panchayat and one cluster animator given the task of guiding a group of five such volunteers. Also, master trainers are appointed to teach volunteers the basics including rapport building with villagers, door-to-door surveys, social and resource mappings.

"They are also trained in how to address the gram sabha and talk about the problems of the hamlet and seek solution," Vashisht said, adding that the results have been amazing and pointing to Kolhari as a case in point.

IANS

MP villagers invent new protest formula: Classes held on tree

2007-09-10T15:33:00.000-07:00

In a unique way to protest against insufficient number of school teachers in village Kalighati of Petlawad area (Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh), classes of a particular school were held atop a tree.

VILLAGE KALIGHATI of Petlawad area Madhya Pradesh (MP) witnessed a unique form of protest from the community members, as at least 25 students of a school climbed on a tree and a youth from the village took the classes on the tree top. They were protesting against the lack of teachers in the primary and middle schools in their area. Besides village Kalighati, nearly a dozen other villages took part in the protest and there the schools did not function on August 30.

As per the survey conducted by a social organisation, committed to the cause of education, about 235 posts of teachers are lying vacant in Petlawad area, which falls under Jhabua, a tribal district in the western part of MP. The teacher: pupil ratio in the area is about 1:125. In decentralized governance set up, as it should be, the issue was discussed in the Gram Sabhas held in the area on August 15, wherein they had passed a resolution demanding filling up of the vacancies of teachers by August 30, 2007. But when nothing happened, they decided to keep schools closed on 30th August and in one school of village Kalighati, classes were held on a tree nearby, which ran for two hours. As per the information received after the incident, four teachers have been provided to the schools. But the district needs more teachers and people hope that their children will have teachers in the school soon.

Jhabua district in its twelve blocks has about 4421 schools and as per the District Information System for Education (DISE), a school based statistical system supported by National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), an autonomous organisation set up Government of India reveals that about 49.6 per cent schools are having a single teacher in the district. Strikingly data points out that 22.7 per cent schools in Jhabua are single classroom schools, which is an important issue and needs to be responded.

The problem is not only in Jhabua alone. Though across the State of Madhya Pradesh the access to schools and enrolment rates have improved, number of teachers have not increased. Challenges like lack of teachers, irregular classes, overcrowded classrooms and poor quality of teaching have been impacting the learning level of children and the system is not able to retain children in schools. This is particularly important in rural and tribal areas wherein poverty is an issue. Here, still rather than sending their children to fields, parents spend their hard earned money to admit them in schools with an expectation that their children would get good education. But when system fails to meet their expectations, it further adds to their frustration. It may be pertinent to point out that tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh have a high dropout rate in schools, and events like these are pointers to gaps in the education system, which need urgent attention.

Contributed by Anil Gulati

Heila community: Dreaming for a life with dignity

2007-09-01T09:16:00.000-07:00

ADHIR KUMAR SAXENA

Living a life with dignity is one of the fundamental rights of every Indian national. Indian Constitution, UN Charter and even Human Rights Commissions have time and again reiterated commitments towards them. Human Scavenging has a blanket ban in India but the sorrowful state of affairs and indifferent state governments have left the Heila and Walmiki communities still engaged in disposal of human feces (scavenging). The act is shear slavery, as these communities work on petty amounts of Rs 20 per month, cleaning human wastes. They are `untouchables', and higher castes would not allow them in religious places, share food with them or even invite them on festivities. They clean human excreta, remove dead animals (carcass) from public places and act a vulture in keeping the ecological balance.

A hutment of 54 families from the Heila community (a sub-caste in Minority Muslims) engaged in human scavenging finds a very poor settlement at Tarana (Tehsil under Ujjain district). Yes, human scavenging really exists in this Tehsil and Zubeda (56 years) carries human waste on her head every morning. In return she get Rs 10 per house in a month. She has under her Jagiri, a total of 75 houses. Her daughter-in-law also helps her nowadays. Her daughters would not do the inhuman work but once they are married, they will also be engaged in the same scavenging (a pre condition for marriage in the community). Zubeda get stale Chapatis also some times, but then, in exchange she will not be given her wages.

Tarana Tehsil has a small Muhalla of these untouchables who will not get any support from either government agencies or other communities. Their children have to take their own utensils to school if they want mid-day meals otherwise they would not be served. They have a separate sitting place in schools and they are virtually secluded, and could not move out of the Muhalla. Mohammed Mansoor, himself from the community claims that normally it is believed that untouchability is obsolete in Muslim community, but we are not allowed to participate in Rozaftar. Upper caste Muslims do not allow us close to them and we could not enter their houses.

Forced to work, these scavengers are pressed into duties to remove dead animal bodies, serve women post delivery, but no payment is made. Untouchability is still prevalent in Bapu's country, shattering his dreams of a free India. Unfortunately, the Nagar Palika ( a government entity) itself employs scavengers for removing dead animals found in streets. Despite relentless efforts of these under privileged engaged in inhuman occupation, they are not allowed to shift to any other profession.

No other community comes to their aid and they sell their Jagiri (cluster of houses where they are engaged in human scavenging for generations together) in times of need.

Adding pain to agony, these scavengers are still gratified to their petty pay masters for giving them livelihood. These scavengers have been working in these houses for ages now and call them their Jagiri (property). This Jagiri is sold or given on lease by the owner scavenger in times of need. There is no excess to other occupations, as the upper castes do not give them jobs. These scavengers come under Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and thus government job opportunities are very limited.

Published in Free Press Bhopal September 1, 2007

Malnutrition 'killing millions of kids'

2007-08-25T11:35:00.001-07:00

Malnutrition kills nearly six million children a year, mainly in developing countries, despite the availability of relatively cheap solutions that could improve global nutrition, a report said.

While low and middle-income countries bear the brunt of the problem, malnutrition affects some rich countries as well, said the report by the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington policy research group.

The bureau's "2007 World Population Data Sheet" and two companion reports provide up-to-date demographic, health and environmental data for all the countries and major regions of the world.

The report said poor nutrition during the mother's pregnancy and the baby's early years causes severe and irreversible mental and physical damage.

Bill Butz, president of the Population Reference Bureau, said the public often does not consider the deadly toll of malnutrition among children "because it does not kill young children directly, as does pneumonia or diarrhoea.

"Many of these deaths could be averted through nutrition measures that are known to be effective, often at low cost," Butz said.

"Malnutrition often increases susceptibility to disease, while ill health exacerbates poor nutrition," the report said. "For countries ravaged by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, malnutrition appears to increase vulnerability to infection and render retro viral treatments less effective."

Despite some important progress, the report said, about 30 per cent of children in low- and middle-income countries are underweight. The largest problems are in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

For example, almost half the children are underweight in some Indian states.

To improve nutrition In the short term, the report said, countries should begin monitoring and promoting growth, changing nutritional behaviour, improving communication with people at risk of malnutrition and introducing iodised salt.

Later they could establish community-based nutrition programs that target young children, adolescent girls and pregnant women.

Other highlights in the report:

-World population growth will continue. It is projected to rise to 9.3 billion by 2050 from 6.6 billion in 2007.

-Fertility rates may be rising again in some European countries where they have been on the wane. The number of children women are having is increasing in Italy, Spain and Sweden, among others.

-The prevalence of HIV/AIDS probably is lower than earlier estimated but remains an international crisis. More than 4 million people were newly infected in 2006.

-The international refugee population increased during 2006 to 9.9 million from 8.7 million. It attributed the increase in large part to Iraqis leaving for other countries, particularly to neighbouring Syria and Jordan.

Engaging India: A matter of national shame

2007-08-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

Financial Times
By Amy Yee, New Delhi correspondent

At a health centre in India’s Madhya Pradesh state, three-year-old Rajkumar clings to his mother, a woman named Anita whose youth is hinted at only when a smile cracks her weathered face. Rajkumar wails when his mother moves away slightly, standing by himself on the cot where she sits.

I am unsure whether he is crying for his mother or because it is painful to stand: his legs are matchstick thin – merely the width of two of my fingers. Rajkumar weights only 5.9 kg (13 pounds) when he should weigh 12 kg. His hair is brittle, light brown – another tell-tale sign of malnourishment.

Nearby, another mother looks on from amid the rows of cots lined up across the large room. She cradles her baby, whose head dwarfs his frail, doll-like body.

Severely malnourished children like Rajkumar and their mothers are sent to health centres like this one by government health workers who work, with assistance from Unicef, in surrounding villages at ”anganwadi” – half-day pre-schools where children are fed, immunised, weighed, and monitored. If left untreated, children at this stage are likely to die from infections that plague their weakened bodies. Indeed, more than half of all deaths among under-fives are linked to malnutrition, says the World Health Organisation.

At the health centres, launched by Unicef and the Madhya Pradesh state government a few years ago, mothers are counseled on nutrition and hygiene. At this town clinic in Shivpuri district, about five hours from Delhi by train, children and their mothers are fed and monitored for two weeks.

At an anganwadi in a small hamlet miles from the health centre, children sing cheerful songs and crowd the floor of a simple shack. There they eat a daily lunch prepared from local ingredients on a wood-burning hearth. Today it is a meal of soy, groundnuts, rice, potato, onion, mint, oil and salt. The anganwadi also acts as a resource centre for mothers: its walls bear posters with bright cartoons that warn of polio and anemia.

Government-run anganwadi have been in place for three decades. The network has been expanded as part of a national plan to improve children’s health. In recent years Unicef has stepped up its presence in landlocked Madhya Pradesh, or ”Middle State”, which has some of the worst levels of malnutrition among already alarming national numbers.

An astonishing 46.3 per cent of all children under the age of three in India are malnourished, and nearly 80 per cent are anemic, according to the government’s National Health and Family Survey of 2005-06. There has been marginal improvement since 1992-93, when 51 per cent of under-threes were underweight. But in Madhya Pradesh, figures have worsened from 55 per cent in 1998-1999 to 60 per cent in 2005-2006.

The statistics are stupefying given India’s ambition of becoming a global power. It is hard to take that aspiration seriously with almost half the country’s infants malnourished during critical years of cognitive and physical development. Even if Rajkumar lives to adulthood, he may be mentally and physically stunted. One wonders how India will reap the much-touted ”demographic dividend” of its youth where half of its 1.1bn population is under the age of 25.

Aid agencies say it is difficult to fund projects to combat the pervasive problem of malnutrition because of ’fatigue’ among donors. But India’s malnutrition ranks far worse than sub-Saharan Africa’s average rate of 27 per cent for children under the age of five, an ugly fact that rouses officials from complacency.

Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, condemned malnutrition as ”a matter of national shame” in his Independence Day address last week. Mr Singh ambitiously urged eradicating malnutrition in five years, and said communities must help ensure that corruption does not divert funds from the needy.

Of course, this is all much easier said then done. The challenges are starkly laid out during this visit to Madhya Pradesh. The state’s large population of 60m is scattered across thousands of villages with dirt roads and limited or no electricity, making them difficult and expensive for health workers to reach. Low literacy of 60 per cent makes it is hard to spread knowledge through pamphlets and posters.

Many mothers simply don’t know how to care for infants in the absence of adequate education. Only 55 per cent of mothers in Madhya Pradesh deliver in hospitals – though that’s an improvement from 26 per cent a few years ago – so most lack advice from healthcare professionals from the start. Anita, for example, says she didn’t know Rajkumar was malnourished in spite of his emaciated state.

Most rural diets are dominated by grain, which is inadequate for a growing child who needs protein, vitamins and minerals. Lunch at the anganwadi cannot compensate for a paltry diet at home.

But even if they have money, accessing better food is a major challenge for rural families. The nearest open-air markets are miles away and transport is not readily available. Supermarkets, so ubiquitous in the developed world, seem like a bizarre fantasy while standing among the low, mud-walled homes in this village in Shivapur.

Superstitions and taboos also are deeply ingrained in local culture. Anita admits she did not breastfeed her son in the first critical days after her birth because her mother-in-law discouraged her.

Yet there are glimmers of hope. Back at the town health centre, a casual labourer named Papku sits with his 10-month old son who is stricken with diarrhea. Sleeping next to the infant on the cot is Papku’s three-year-old son, Krishna, who was admitted to the centre a year ago weighing just 6 kg. After his parents were counseled on proper nutrition, Krishna’s weight has doubled to 12 kg (26.5 pounds) in a year. The boy looks robust and meaty although his father earns only Rs60 ($1.50) a day to support his family of six, which includes his wife and three young daughters.

Given his modest means why did Papku have five children? Papku matter-of-factly states that even after his eldest son was born, he wanted two sons in case one died. It is a jarring explanation. But the pragmatic answer reflects life for Papku and his family – and hundreds of millions like them across India.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

Using village planning to address community problems

2007-08-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

A village planning initiative has been launched by the district administration in Guna, Madhya Pradesh, jointly with the UNICEF and NGOs. Institutional delivery has since improved; now, more girls go to schools; immunization levels have increased.
AT GUNA, Madhya Pradesh, it was meeting of a different kind; more than eighty village facilitators, supporting village planning initiatives in the district of Guna in the State of Madhya Pradesh, were at Guna block headquarters to share their experience in helping the children and women of the district.

Village planning initiative is a process initiated by the district administration and UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) with the support of NGOs (non-government organizations), in Guna. It is based on engaging the community, using the norms of participatory rural appraisal techniques. As part of the process, social maps were prepared to assess the distribution of the available resources in the villages. Household and family surveys were then conducted to collect basic information about the village, the community and the needs of children, primarily in the areas of health, education, nutrition, drinking water and sanitation in addition to information on socio-economic conditions.

Using the said information as the basis, the community groups prepared village plans for presentation and approval in a special Gram Sabha or village meeting. Sunil Raghuvansahi, a facilitator, who works in Aaron block of Guna district with a non-government organization, sees his role as that of one which can help has-ten the pace of social development. Basanti Pant, another village facilitator, who works in Sungahwasa, Piproda village and the hamlet of Chak Dingahwas of Guna block explained the process and how she, along with other members of her community, were able to sort out the issues and concerns of the villagers. ‘This is important, if one has to solve the problem of the community; the community needs to come together; then only we can resolve the concern facing the community at village level’, she adds. She sees the change happening. Institutional delivery is increasing, more girls are going to school and immunization levels have increased. Electricity and water scarcity are still a challenge which needs to be addressed.

Ladbai, a friend of Basanti Pant and another facilitator helping in the ‘process of social change’ for five Gram Panchayats of Raghogarh block in the same district, says that it is not only the community members, but the Sarpanch, members of the service delivery system like auxiliary nurses, midwives and anganwadi workers who are actively involved, so they can respond to the needs and wishes of the people. She proudly says, ‘now we have all the information with us - like how many children need to be immunized; how many women are pregnant, etc. Similarly Hemlata Sharma, who works in Raghograh block, talks about her experience; on how she got many girls into school and on how she got 18 toilets constructed at her village. ‘We are a link between the district administration and the community and help the community monitor services’, adds Mukesh Kumar Chandel, who works in Chachoda block, while explaining his role as facilitator.

These facilitators use tools like community-monitoring chart for the various services provided at the village level. ‘Any change, however small, which benefits children and women is important, as it contributes to saving the lives of children and women, and you are a contributor to that change’ said UNICEF’s Planning Officer Veena Bandyopadhyaya, while interacting with these facilitators.

The intensive process has helped increase the engagement between community members, NGOs and the district delivery system and support the State in strengthening its implementation of the initiative for women and children. Micro-plans for all the villages in Guna are ready and the district response team has worked out an action plan which is responding to the needs of the community. These village facilitators have worked out the following four-point action plan to hasten the pace of work in the district:

(1) To periodically review village plans with the various stakeholders, namely the Sarpanch, Secretary of the Panchayat, Anganwadi worker, school teacher, ANM and others.

(2)To support progressive community-monitoring by using various charts jointly with the members of the community.

(3)Collate accurate village-level statistics in the areas of concern and use the same to advise people at the village level during the block and district task force meetings.

(4)‘Their problem first’: community problems rank first and to help in addressing the said problems, the village facilitators will promote community-level dialogue, listen to the problems and concerns of the community first and help in the redress of the problems.

Anil Gulati

Regional Consultation Meet: Rights of the Child discussed

2007-08-18T04:54:00.000-07:00

With an aim of inviting suggestions to prepare the report on Convention on the Rights of the Child, a consultation meet was organised in Bhopal. The meet was attended by representatives of various organisations of national and state level repute.
A THREE-DAY REGIONAL consultation meet for preparation of India’s country report on the Convention on the Rights of the Child was recently held at Bhopal. This was second such meeting organised by Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India, wherein first one was held at Chandigarh. More than 50 civil society and state partners from states like Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh participated in the consultation. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is an international treaty signed by Government of India in year 1992. It is also a legal binding international instrument, incorporating the full range of human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights.

The Convention sets out these rights in 54 articles and two Optional Protocols to which India is signatory and these are for the benefit of children. The four core principles of the Convention are non-discrimination; devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child. Dr Hamid El Bashir, State Representative, UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh, participating in the meet said that society needs to lead the change process and could lead the thinking of the government as well. Children have unmet rights in Madhya Pradesh and we need a holistic approach when we talk about child’s rights. We need to create a mass movement around children for making that happen. Madhya Pradesh state needs to strengthen the child rights monitoring and take into account child views when we decide for children view. When we decide not to include children in fact we are missing important members of the society.

Karuna Bishnoi, Communication Officer, UNICEF Delhi who was participating in the meet spoke on the need of taking views of children into account and also increase our understanding of many issues which have got reflected at the consultation so that suitable recommendations can be provided. She said that India will be reporting for the first time on the Optional Protocols on children affected by armed conflict and sale of children, may be we need to understand the context better and provide suitable suggestions. Razia Ismail Abbasi, Co-Convenor of India Alliance for Child Rights, a national network of non governmental organisation working for child rights who participated in the workshop said that we need to invest more in children and young people and it is an investment not just the welfare.

Issue of ’defining the age of a child’ in India came up in the meeting. As per ’Convention on the Rights of the Child article one, anyone below 18 is considered a child. Whereas Indian laws like juvenile justice, child labour etc. differ on the age parameters.

Participants suggested that we should work towards making ‘18 years age’ a common parameter for defining a child, under all Indian laws. They also proposed that there is a need of strengthening of implementation of the various laws and policies besides engaging communities in implementation. “There is need of increasing awareness not only amongst communities but also among implementers,” added a participant from Maharashtra.

Representatives of World Vision, Plan International, and Child Line Foundation along with others contributed various suggestions for the report. Non-governmental organisations from Madhya Pradesh namely Aarambh, Oasis, Madhya Pradesh Samaj Sewa Sanstha, Madhya Pradesh Voluntary Health Association, Vikas Samvad, Janshas, National Institute of Women Youth and Child Development contributed from the state perspective. C K Reejonia, Under Secretary, Women and Child Development Department, Government of India; Representatives from Women and Child Development, Education and Social Justice from the state and Women and Child Development Maharashtra also participated in the meeting.

Immunisation need of the hour : Workshop gets under way

2007-08-06T18:58:00.000-07:00

Bhopal, Aug 6: 'Need is to change at grassroots and you can inspire that change', Dr Hamid El Bashir State Representative UNICEF Office for Madhya Pradesh said while addressing District Immunisation Officers and others present from twenty four districts of the state in inaugural of three day Routine Immunisation workshop.

He added that though State of Madhya Pradesh has indicators, which are low, and have problems of delivery of services to the people at the village level. But he added that change is possible, imminent and is near. We need to strengthen monitoring, engage communities and support behaviour change. He added that UNICEF is committed to that change and suggested a five-point mechanism which can help bring in that change.

The points according to hims are 1. Identify pockets that are hard to reach which have low performance indicators, 2. Need to identify, difficult to reach populations in the above identified pockets, 3. To Increase focus on urban slums, 4. To strengthen monitoring system and database management and 5. To adopt a campaign that can build an enabling atmosphere of change by engaging civil society partners.

Dr Naresh Goyal Assistant Commissioner Government of India while opening the meeting stressed on the importance of immunisation. He said that Government of India had reviewed progress of routine immunisation in the year 2004 and all the recommendations that were suggested in that review were agreed by the Government in the year 2005. All efforts are being put both by Centre and State and in case still we are not reaching may be we need to look into it. He spoke on the need of strengthening reporting and accuracy of the reported data, which is very important. He added that ten districts in Madhya Pradesh have low routine immunisation indicators, but there are examples of districts which are doing well.

This is first of the series of the initiatives, Dr Gagan Gupta, Health Specialist with UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh. He added that this training will not only look at the elements of strengthening routine immunisation, but will also look into the issue of adverse events following Immunisation and issue of the database.

Dr Yogiraj Sharma, Director Public Health, while addressing the participants said that we must use this training an opportunity to improve. We need to follow a bottom up approach and not only plan better, deliver better and also ensure timely reporting. Dr Balwinder of WHO, Dr Vijay Kiran of 'Immunisation Basics, Dr A N Mittal Joint Director RCH Directorate of Health Services, Dr Jayshree Chandra, Deputy Director, Child Health, Directorate of health services were also present.

Breast feed newborn for healthy development, says Minister

2007-07-31T19:35:00.000-07:00

The Pioneer, Aug 1, 2007

Minister for Woman and Child Development Kusum Mehdele has urged the expectant mothers on the occasion of World Breast Feeding Week, which began on Tuesday, to breast feed their newborn within an hour of their birth for their all round development. She said that mothers' milk during the first few days helps increase immunity and promotes growth of the child.

It may be mentioned that several programmes are being organised by the Woman and Child Development Department in cooperation of UNICEF, CARE and Breast Feeding Promotion Network of India to mark the 16th Breast Feeding Week which is being observed from August 1 to 7 in the State.

A pilot project prepared by the department is being implemented in 30 hospitals of Bhopal during the World Breast Feeding Week. Under the project, 46 college girl students and 14 supervisors of the department would highlight the importance of breast feeding within an hour after the delivery to the expectant mothers and would encourage its practise. Director WCD Kalpana Shrivastava throwing light on the project said that such campaign would be launched in all the districts of the State on the basis of its success. She further stated that the women will have to accept the breast feeding as the most important foundation step for the child development.

Breast Feeding Promotion Network of India State coordinator Dr Sheela Bhambal mentioned that the milk secreted by mothers during the first few days, which is called colostrum transmits life to the baby. This initiative could control infant mortality rate to a greater extent. State representative UNICEF Hamid El Bashir said that the first three years after the birth are critical in the development of the child and during this period various capabilities are largely determined in the child.

Cast away: No takers for these Dalit snake charmers

2007-07-30T07:47:00.000-07:00

Suchandana Gupta,Times of India, July 29, 2007

HOSHANGABAD: While most other boys his age jump at the sight of a cat, six-year-old Khemchand Sapera helps his dad catch poisonous snakes. Too young and feeble to lift a python, Khemchand can, however, give a free demonstration of how to catch a live cobra. You would think he's a local hero, idolised by neighbourhood boys. On the contrary, Khemchand is shooed away by them as they cry out calling him an "untouchable".

If you thought untouchability has lost its grip, here's a reality check — it's being practised, and not by the upper castes only.

Just 20 metres from National Highway 12 and 170 km from Bhopal near Rani Pipariya village in Hoshangabad district resides a community of snake charmers. Considered one of the lowest among Dalits, even other sects of the Dalit community do not mix with them. "We cannot even reside in the main village and have to live at least 200 metres away from rest of the society," said Mallunath Sapera, an elderly member of the community.

"Although they might be pushed to one corner, other Dalit communities are permitted to at least live inside the villages. But no one will accept us. The Kathiars, Charmkars and Meras are also scheduled castes, but they don't touch us. At weddings, we sit to eat with animals. As for the upper castes, we go stand in front of their houses during Nag Panchmi festival and they throw us a rupee or two. We still cannot enter the temples, our children cannot go to school and politically we have no power since we are less in numbers," said Mallunath.

Hoshangabad district has only 1,200 members of the Sapera community, while Madhya Pradesh has less than 25,000 families. Every successive government in the state has formulated policies and spent thousands of crores for the uplift of the Dalit community, but nothing seems to have reached this group.

In January 2002, the then Digvijay Singh-led Congress government had announced its Dalit agenda and claimed to distribute thousands of acres of government land among Dalits — nothing reached the Saperas of Rani Pipariya.

The successive Uma Bharati government promised a new Dalit policy and the current Shivraj Singh Chauhan administration called a Dalit panchayat in the CM's official residence. But life has hardly changed for Khemchand and his brother Tulsiram (5), who still go with their father to catch snakes in the morning because other students refuse to study with them and there is nothing else they can do.

An average Sapera family in Rani Pipariya earns about Rs 35-50 a day. Though they have BPL cards, they don't have the Rs 120 required to fetch the rations. Snake charming, their only source of livelihood, is also under "threat". "The forest department takes away our snakes and puts us behind bars. They say catching snakes is a crime. But how do we live? We have no other means of livelihood. No one even stepped into our village till six years ago when our names were included for the first time in the electoral list," said Chandabai, mother of eight children.

Fearing the police and forest departments, Chandabai sends her children with the snakes to the villages. "The police don't lock-up children. So we depend mostly on our children to do the earning

Breastfeeding best start to child's life

2007-07-27T20:32:00.000-07:00

Bhopal, July 27: Dr Hamid El Bashir, State Representative UNICEF Office for Madhya Pradesh while participating at the training workshop for young volunteers in Bhopal said that early initiation of breastfeeding and exclusive breastfeeding till six months gives a child a best start in the life. It helps increase immunity within the child and benefits the development of the brain of the child, and child will grow better in the later years. He was speaking at the workshop organized for orienting and training young post graduate and graduate students of nutrition from Sarojini Naidu Girls College. He congratulated the young volunteers for their commitment to voluntarism. More than sixty volunteers were participating in this one day workshop which was organized by Women and Child Development department, Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India and UNICEF. These volunteers would help support raising awareness on the issue at various institutions.

Dr Sheela Bhambal, State Coordinator, Breastfeeding Promotion network of India, Madhya Pradesh chapter made a presentation on the key messages for optimal breastfeeding, early initiation of the breastfeeding and spoke on the answers to the common problems encountered during breastfeeding by women. She spoke on the importance of colostrums, the mothers' first breastfeed and early initiation. Dr. Manjula Vishwas, Head of the department of Home Sciences from Sarojini Naidu College spoke to the participants about dangers of feeding prelacteals to the new born.

Suresh Tomar, District Programme Officer Women and Child Development department, Bhopal welcomed the participants and explained about the purpose of the workshop. Dr. Vandana Agarwal, Nutrition Specialist, UNICEF Bhopal motivated the participants to contribute during the world breast feeding week by creating awareness at the delivery institutions and later on they can be ambassadors for taking this vital information within communities. Dr Ohri Chief Medical and Health Officer Bhopal complemented the effort and assured the support from the health departments and hospitals. Honey Jhalani, National trainer for Infant and Young Child Feeding practices, explained about the significance of the colostrum feeding, its benefits, correct positioning and attachment between mother and the child while breastfeeding. Nisha Jain, Women and Child Development department spoke on the factors which influence early initiation of breastfeeding and how communication and its effective use can help overcome many myths associated with it.

MP to increase enrolment in schools

2007-07-05T05:29:00.000-07:00

Lalit Shastri, The Hindu, July 5, 2007

Free textbooks for all children, uniforms to girl students being offered

JHABUA (MADHYA PRADESH): With the reopening of schools for the new academic year, efforts are being made by the Madhya Pradesh Government to ensure maximum enrolment of children in schools.

Travelling through the tribal district of Jhabua, bordering Gujarat, this correspondent could notice that special efforts were needed on a large scale to address issues like poor quality of education, lack of trained teachers and academic support as well as the problem of migrating families, which was making it difficult to retain a large number of children in schools.

The Madhya Pradesh Government’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is aimed at improving the quality of education in schools through free distribution of textbooks for all children, provision of school uniforms to girl students and scholarships to children belonging to the disadvantaged and deprived sections, training of parent-teacher associations (PTAs) and improvement in the existing school infrastructure and by providing improved drinking water and toilet facilities.

To meet the larger objectives of primary education, a quality education initiative is presently being implemented in Madhya Pradesh. In Jhabua, UNICEF supports quality education in two clusters of 10 to 15 schools in each block in partnership with the district administration and Rajya Shiksha Kendra. Besides advocating the need for quality education, UNICEF has also provided school furniture and a mathematics kit, which includes self-learning material, for schools in this district.

Hamid El Bashir, State Representative at the UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh, said that in villages there has been great progress in areas of elementary and primary education.

Especially in tribal areas, he said, enrolment has increased substantially. “We need to invest more on quality education and in efforts to retain the children of migrating parents in schools,” said Dr. Bashir, adding that UNICEF has agreed in principle to support mobile schools for the sake of children of migrating parents.

Dr. Bashir said that the State Government was doing good work but more efforts were needed. “We are working with the Government for teachers’ training and are also ready to join hands to motivate families to enrol girls in schools.”

While supporting activity-based teachers’ training and development of PTA training module and monitoring tools based on classroom observation, UNICEF plans to train cluster academic coordinators to monitor classroom activities.

60 pc MP kids are malnourished: UN

2007-06-22T23:05:00.000-07:00

Seth Doane,CNN

The latest report of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says almost half of Indian children under the age of three are underweight and has called malnutrition in India a case of silent emergency.

Madhya Pradesh, which is the worst hit state, has thousands of children suffering. One of many such children is Kalpina, whose thinning legs, lightened hair and weakened stamina are clear signs of severe malnutrition.
“I am worried about my child. She is severely malnourished. I told my husband I should go to the hospital for treatment. He said if the child will die then let her die,” says Kalipna’s mother, Gita.

Meanwhile, UNICEF Representative in Madhya pradesh Hamid El Bashir says, “Malnutrition is much higher among girls in India because people culturally prefer to feed the boys. There is a preference in this. So there are many factors.”
UNICEF estimates there are more than 70,000 severely malnourished children in Madhya Pradesh. But there are just 30 centres like UNICEF to deal with the crisis.
“Zero to three is a critical age for children. Most of the brain formation and the intellectual formation of the child takes place within this period. So if we do not put much investment on children at this age we are going to lose a lot,” Hamid explains.

Malnutrition is a problem that has always been brushed under the carpets by politicians but the dire conditions in Madhya Pradesh now definitely call for some mandate moves.

Former district collector of Shivpuri, Dr Manohar Agnani says, “I think the word 'enough' effort will be only good to say when you do not have a single death of malnutrition.”

However, the state in the rest of the country is no better than Madhya Pradesh. India ranks amongst the worst countries when it comes to malnutrition cases.
According to UNICEF, even in so-called ‘posh’ areas like south Delhi up to 60 per cent children under the age of three suffer from malnutrition.
Although, there is a nationwide effort to curb malnutrition at UNICEF centres, the situation is so critical that it definitely calls for more measures and definitely on a much larger scale.

However, what is ironic is that India has long had a surplus in food grains and has one of the largest child health and nutrition programs in the world

Malnutrition stalks India’s children

2007-05-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

AFP Release

Penny MacRae

Nearly a third of children are born underweight which means their mothers are underweight and undernourished. Many mothers do not have time to regularly nurse their baby’s as they must work as farm or manual labourers, domestic servants or in factories

KOLARAS, India: His wizened frame cradled in his mother’s arms, 18-month-old Nitish gazes listlessly at his surroundings in an Indian government feeding centre in this parched farming belt. The baby’s skin is so taut that each rib can be counted and his whispy hair is a rusty brown rather than glossy black, characteristic of malnutrition.

“He just got thinner and thinner after getting diarrhea,” said his mother Savitri, 24, a farm labourer’s wife. On the other side of the room, seven-month-old Niketa, being fed formula milk with a spoon by her grandmother, waves a stick-like arm. Her mother died two days after she was born following a difficult delivery.

“God is unjust — He took her mother away and her father doesn’t want her,” said her grandmother Soni, 55, rocking the tiny doll-like figure at the feeding centre in Kolaras in central Madhya Pradesh state.

These babies, lying in a room hung with pictures of roly-poly infants smiling down, are just two of the 46 per cent of all Indian children under three years old that the government says are malnourished. In the dust-bowl state of Madhya Pradesh, where monsoon rains have been scant for five years, the number is higher — a staggering 60 percent, the worst in the country.

“It’s the silent emergency — children are just fading away,” said Meital Rusdia, spokeswoman for the UN children’s agency Unicef. Malnutrition endures despite India’s booming economy, which grew by an average 8.5 per cent over the past four years.

“It’s shameful to have India become a trillion-dollar economy and to have nearly 50 per cent of the children hungry,” pediatrician Vandana Prasad, a member of the People’s Health Movement. Government investments in development are “insufficient,” Unicef says.

Figures for child mortality, underweight children and other basic health indicators have shown no significant improvement in seven years.

While India has banished the spectre of famine that plagued its history and overshadowed the early years of independence, “household level” food security has still not been achieved.

Millions subsist on the barest of basic foods — wheat, lentils and rice. Poor sanitation, under nourishment and haphazard immunisation makes them vulnerable to infection. Children suffer most in this cycle.

Just not enough feeding centres to care for all those in need. The “anganwadis” or village child care centres look after children under six and are the government’s first line of defence against malnutrition.

The Supreme Court has ordered free noon meals for all children under six. But the Citizens’ Initiative for the Rights of Children Under Six has highlighted lack of funds, poor staffing and corruption in providing meals that are often scanty and sometimes non-existent as the money has been pocketed.

At one centre visited by AFP, the children were served two small pieces of flat Indian bread and a tiny portion of potatoes. There was no protein.

“The government only gives two rupees (five cents) per child. What can you do with such small funds.

What they get is a disgrace,” said an aid worker who asked not to be identified.

To help severely malnourished babies, the government has set up intensive feeding centres but there just are not enough. “The babies’ mothers are often undernourished and they have low weight babies,” said Dr Nisar Ahmed, whose job it is at the Kolaras feeding centre to fatten up the children.

Nearly a third of children are born underweight which means their mothers are underweight and undernourished. “Some mothers just don’t produce enough breast milk,” he says.

Also, as pediatrician Prasad notes, many mothers do not have time to regularly breastfeed as they must work as farm or manual labourers, domestic servants or in factories.

“Some 97 per cent of working women in India work in the unorganised sector” — a catch-all phrase for casual workers — “and nobody makes time for them to breast-feed so their children suffer,” she says.

Some unlucky babies like Niketa lose their mothers in childbirth or soon after.

The maternal mortality ratio is 540 maternal deaths per 100,000 births, mainly due to lack of timely, proper health care. Malnutrition exacts a high cost.

“Their physical and mental development is stunted,” says Ahmed. With 40 per cent of India’s population under 18, the malnutrition figures are significant for India’s future.

Some studies suggest widespread malnutrition lops two to four percentage points off potential economic growth. Ahmed says for every baby who is saved, many go undetected. We do our best but we can’t reach everyone,” he said.

Workshop on water management begins

2007-05-23T22:14:00.000-07:00

The Pioneer, May 24, 2007

A two-day workshop on 'wise water management' began here on Wednesday. The seminar was inaugurated by Bhopal division Commissioner BK Naidu.He stressed on the importance of the Jal Abhishek Abhiyan, effective water management and sanitation.

At the inuagural session Bhopal-Hoshangabad Divisional Commissioner BR Naidu said that the motive of the workshop is to target the 200 nirmal gram per district project in the divisions. He called on officials to engage community and Panchayati Raj members in their efforts.

Assistant Commissioner (Tribal) Jassu spoke on the need to scale up the water and sanitation efforts in Ashram schools. HN Gupta, superintending engineer of Bhopal division also spoke at the meeting. Project officer of water and environmental sanitation of UNICEF Sam Godfrey said that aim of the workshop is to orient district level officials on global techniques for solving water scarcity (such as water reuse/recycling) with the objective of scaling up the wise water management approach to Ashram schools throughout the Bhopal division. He spoke on UNICEF experiences in Dhar and Jhabua. Wise water management was initially implemented in 26 Ashram schools of Dhar and Jhabua districts and construction in Ashram schools of Bhopal division to be undertaken in May, 2007. Tribal Welfare Department has already allocated Rs three crore for construction of 100 wise water management systems in addition to funds allocation by PHED for 300 systems in Madhya Pradesh. UNICEF's Pawan Kumar, HB Dwivedi of National Centre for Human Settlement and Environment (NCHSE) were also present. Officials of Public Health Engineering Department and Tribal Welfare Department from eight districts of Bhopal Division are participating in the same.

A sanitation revolution sweeps across Madhya Pradesh

2007-05-04T03:35:00.001-07:00

By Anil Gulati

May 2007: Jabarha village in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh is gripped with lliteracy poverty. Yet amidst all the grim socio-economic scenario, aray of hope shines.

A robust improvement in sanitation has metamorphosed the basic look of the village.

The central government has set a target of constructing a latrine in every house in all villages by 2012.With the implementation of the Total Sanitation Campaign, this tribal dominated hamlet nearly 100 kms from Dhar district headquarters, has gradually started learning the ABCs of sanitation. The first revolutionary step in this direction was the construction of a latrine in each of the 310 households of the village.

Like many traditional Indian villages Jabarha was almost untouched by modern infrastructural development. Open air defecation, uncontrolled movement of cattle, littering adjacent to water reservoirs---all the standard unhygienic characteristics were prevalent in the village.

But in the last four months the village has spruced up its 'hygiene quotient' and the residents have acquired a new sanitation vocabulary, all without any coercion. Each of the 310 houses has a latrine, a container has been kept outside each house to accumulate the garbage, the streets are without any stray cattle and the drains impeccably clean without overflow on the roads.

The campaign's reach was 8 percent in Dhar district in 2005 and has risen to 23 percent in 2007

In Indore district more than 75 percent of Below-Poverty-Line dwellers have constructed a latrine in their homes. In Seoni, Hoshangabad and Sehore this figure has touched between 50 to 75 percent.Sarpanch Ms Rajkunwar Jatav Jat maintains: "To bring such a change in four months time was an arduous task. The veterans of the village in particular had to be coaxed to give up the 'loti' habit and take to the new method."

Jatav Jat says that she took the help of children and UNICEF supported NGO Vasudha Vikas Sansthan to accomplish this mission. Enumerating the steps taken she said films were shown to the villagers highlighting the benefits of sanitation. "The school teachers were also roped in to make the parents and grandparents realise
the virtues of having a latrine at home. Even we – the village leaders - took up the broom and did not shy away from cleaning the roads. This motivated the villagers to follow suit."

UNICEF's Dr Sam Godfrey says it is nothing less than a revolution for social change.

Five village panchayats had been chosen in the Badnawar Janpad of Dhar District for the Nirmal Gram Puruskar this year.

'Anganwadi calendar', a communication tool

2007-05-03T22:36:00.000-07:00

Bhopal, May 2:

At a first look it may look like a typical monthly Indian calendar available in the nearby market place. But on a second look, it is not!

It is an 'anganwadi calendar' published by the State Women and Child Development Department of the central Indian state, Madhya Pradesh in India. Anganwadi centre is a child care centre in villages of the state which provides services to help improve the nutritional and health status of children below the age of six years and pregnant and lactating mothers. It is set up by the state with the support from Government of India under its Integrated Child Development Scheme. It includes package of services like supplementary nutrition, immunisation, health check-up, referral services, pre-school non-formal education and nutrition & health education for children below the age of six years and pregnant and lactating mothers. The said calendar probably has all the information which one Anganwadi worker needs to provide it to mothers, pregnant women who visit the centre along with their children.

As in all the calendars it has month wise dates in a 'week wise' format duly stapled on to the calendar. In this calendar the month slips could be removed after the month gets over and rest of the portion of the calendar for that month could be used as a poster. It could be stuck on to the wall of an 'anganwadi centre'. It becomes an IEC (information education and communication) tool and helps provide the much needed 'right' information to the families visiting the centre. The information on the calendar is provided both in written and pictorial format, keeping the literacy levels in mind the rural areas of the state.

The calendar has information on the various services available in the anganwadi centre, (very importantly) full child's immunization chart and information about care of pregnant women. It also talks about right age of marriage i.e. 21 years for boys and 18 years for girls and motivates parents to marry their children especially girls at the right age. That's not all it also has key messages on gender equality, importance of exclusive breast feeding till six months and complimentary feeding, which is important in the state which has high rates of infant mortality and low rates of exclusive breastfeeding.

The calendar also relays importance of institutional delivery and has key messages which probably ever family should know and understand. No doubt an effort worth praise, but it may be important to evaluate its effective distribution and use.

By Anil Gulati

Ray of Hope from Bhind, Madhya Pradesh

2007-04-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

Source - www.unicef.org/india

An Indian village with all children who have attended primary school, in educationally backward Madhya Pradesh seems unbelievable. Nonetheless, this is really the case in Baghora village in Bhind district.

The state’s literacy level is 64 percent, nearly paralleling the national literacy rate of 65 percent. However, the rural literacy rate is only 43 percent. The situation is particularly grim in rural areas: 87 percent (272) of the blocks record below average literacy rates and over 90 percent of the blocks have higher gender differentials in literacy levels than the national average. These figures clearly indicate the persisting gender disparities in the state. Bhind district also reflects these disparities with the female literacy at 55.2% and the sex ratio for children in 0-6 years being 832.

With a population of 450 people, Baghora village situated in Bhind district's rough terrain has more that 100 children in the age group of 3-14 years and all of them have either attained education till Class V or are in the process of completing it under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). The village has only one primary school - Shaskiya Prathmik Vidhyalaya, Baghora – which at present has 70 students enrolled, including 29 girls.

So what makes the children of this village attend school regularly when other parts of the state - barring a few - are plagued with teacher absenteeism and drop outs? This is despite incentives like mid-day meals, free textbooks, free uniforms for girls and scholarships. Apt comes the reply, "I go and pursue the parents to send their children to school regularly whenever any one is found absent", said the school's Parent Teacher Association (PTA) president Badou Singh Kushwaha.

Madhya Pradesh has passed the Peoples Education Act, 2002 and these PTAs have been constituted under its aegis. This is one of the landmark efforts of the State Government to enhance school-community linkages and bring about effective participation of parents and community in school development. UNICEF has collaborated with the state education department in developing the training modules for training of PTAs on their roles and responsibilities - modules which are now being used to train PTAs across the state.
“Both parents and teachers own joint responsibility to educate the child", said Krishna Murari Mishra, Headmaster of Sarva Primary School, whose school has five teachers and 229 students. "Earlier teachers used to be concerned only with teaching but now they also know about their responsibility of bringing the child to school and involving the community in school development”. To attract children to schools, education kits and school furniture provided by UNICEF have added to ensuring regularity of children’s’ presence in school.

A few kilometers away from Sarva is Dhamsa - another Bhind village with a government primary school exclusively for girls. This school has 96 girls studying from Class I to Class V. "I want to be a doctor", says Revati (14), who has three brothers and two sisters. Asked the reason why, she said "My father died for want of treatment because there is no doctor in my village". Whether Revati succeeds in fulfilling her desire only time will tell, but one amongst so many Revatis will definitely achieve that milestone one day. "And this has been possible due to Quality Education inputs which have helped improve learning among children", says Sanjay Manjhi, one of the teachers.

UNICEF is partnering the state in implementing Quality Education Initiative across the state to improve quality of education under SSA. There is a special focus on four districts viz. Guna, Shivpuri, Jhabua and Bhind.

Hamid El- Bashir, UNICEF State Representative for Madhya Pradesh, said that 'State of Madhya Pradesh has many developmental challenges and of course many potentials. Among the challenges is to get girls into school and to retain them up to higher grades. Educating children, particularly girls multiplies positive implications on the family and the society at large. Girls’ education is an important indicator for total social change in society. These are some successful initiatives that need to be replicated state wide.”

100 per cent sanitation in Madhya Pradesh village

2007-04-28T23:35:00.000-07:00

Tarawata village in Madhya Pradesh's Guna district stands apart from other villages - it's spick and span. This has been made possible through the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) launched by the administration almost six months back.

Slogans propagating sanitary habits and cleanliness adorn its walls. The alleys passing through the nearly 200 'pucca' (concrete) houses are bereft of any litter. There are no flying plastic bags, no unwanted paper, no cow dung scattered on the streets that look immaculately clean.
The populace, which consists of mainly Kushwah and Brahmin communities, depends mainly on agriculture for sustenance. And it's not just external cleanliness that the around 1,950 villagers have imbibed.

Only two houses in the village had toilets just six months back. Today, it boasts of having a 100 percent sanitation graph. "Not a single house of the village is without a toilet," says SK Mishra, nodal officer of TSC.

"Earlier, the nullahs (drains) would always be choked. But after the district administration's efforts and the implementation of the project, the village has undergone a 'sanitation surgery'," says Sarpanch Hanumant Singh Kushwah. Initially, a lot of counselling had to be done to convince the villagers to discard the age-old tradition of taking a 'lota' (small utensil) and going out for defecation.

"Motivating them to change their mindset was an extremely arduous task. But gradually each one started aping the other. They understood the importance of having a personal and exclusive toilet," says Mishra. Even the children of this village have learnt the importance of personal hygiene. Talk to them about the subject and they start parroting lines straight out of the Class 5 environmental science book: "We should wash our hands before eating. We should brush daily. We should bathe daily and wear clean clothes...."

The children of Tarawata now have a game "Play Pump" installed in their schools by which they lift water to the rooftop. This has helped them to get enough water for drinking and cleaning in their school. This new technique has also helped them understand that electricity is not needed for lifting water - all through the "learn by play" technique.

"What is more important, no case of dysentery has been reported from the village in the past few months. The health indices have become more hygienic," says the sarpanch.

"Efforts of the Guna district team will indeed go a long way in bringing positive results for the children of the district and the state as the scheme is being replicated in other districts," said Hamid El Bashir, the Madhya Pradesh state UNICEF representative.

Women bidi industry workers lament neglect

2007-04-21T02:37:00.000-07:00

Workers of hand-rolled traditional cigarette or bidi industry, most of whom are women are lamenting poor working conditions and low wages.

Thousands of women work for long hours in the predominantly unorganised sector, to roll bidis - tobacco rolled into tendu leaves - but are paid less than Rupees 50 rupees per day.Many bidi manufacturers outsource bidi rolling to women, who take the raw material from these manufacturers and roll it at their at home during free time. They roll around 1000 bidi sticks in a 10-hour shift.The workers complain that they neither get the minimum wages stipulated under law, nor any compensation for health hazards."My eyesight has suffered and my limbs ache as a consequence of working in the tobacco industry for so long. We have to deal with persistent cough and fever due to constant exposure to tobacco, but continue to work due to poverty," said Batibai, a bidi worker.The government runs several schemes for the tobacco industry workers but most say the schemes either remain on paper, or a privileged few draw all benefits."We have become old working in this industry. Fifty years ago I rolled the first bidi but my hands shiver now. I am dependent on my children for food and clothing. Our children have no work; we have no security, pensions or houses to live in," said Sarmania Bai, a septuagenarian. According to a study by the Union Health Ministry, the health hazard in the industry is relatively high - 34 per 100 population, especially get affected by tuberculosis and cancer.State functionaries responsible for labour welfare say the welfare of bidi workers is the responsibility of the Central government, and they are mere facilitators.

"All the welfare schemes pertaining to the 'bidi rolling' workers are under the purview of the Labour Ministry. We are mere co-coordinators. Even the scholarship forms are submitted in the relevant office. If they (the bidi industry workers) have any grudges or applications for identity cards, they can submit them to the Labour Ministry through us. But personally, my office has no direct role in the matter," said S S Dixit, Assistant Labour Commissioner.Bidi accounts for about 53.5 per cent of the country's domestic consumption of tobacco as compared to cigarettes, which account for18.8 percent.The bidi market is pegged between 120 billion rupees to 150 billion rupees.The industry is fragmented across the country, with around 200 manufacturers in every state. But Madhya Pradesh is the major producer of bidis, for easy availability of raw material in the state.

Madhya Pradesh moves to curb child marriages

2007-04-17T17:44:00.001-07:00

Madhya Pradesh is using an auspicious day in the Hindu calendar to crack down on child marriages.The government has unveiled 'Raksha Sootra Bandhan' programmes under its special action plan to check mass child marriages that take place on 'Akshay Tritiya' day April 20. On that day, minor children will tie a band on their parents' wrists with a message that they should not marry off their adolescent children.Akshay Tritiya generally falls in April or May and is considered auspicious for Hindu marriages. Wedding ceremonies, including child marriages, take place on this day in Madhya Pradesh, besides Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

The plan envisages the holding of camps and rallies to generate awareness among the people in Madhya Pradesh. These events would be organised at district and block headquarters and main villages.NGOs say nearly 20,000 children were married off last year on this day in Madhya Pradesh alone. Child marriages normally take place within the Tawar Rajputs, Lodhas, Sodhiyas and Dangi communities. Yadavs and Gujjars also join the cult.Madhya Pradesh comes second to Rajasthan as far as marriage of minor girls is concerned. While the average age of marriage for an Indian girl is 20 years, it is 17 in Madhya Pradesh.

The Unicef's state of the children report for 2007 states that the average age for marriage of girls has been increasing during the last 20 years, but 46 percent girls are still married off before they reach 18 years.The reason for early marriage of girls is not only financial. People also feel that by getting their daughters married off early the girls could be saved from sexual harassment and getting pregnant prior to marriage.

As per Unicef's 'The State of the World's Children 2007', girls marrying before 15 years have five times more chances of dying while giving birth. The state already has a high maternal mortality rate.Realising that such malpractices cannot be curbed through government efforts alone and there is a need to generate awareness in the society, Chief Secretary Rakesh Sahni has instructed district collectors to follow the plan guidelines to make the campaign against child marriage successful.Sahni has asked the collectors to chalk out their own strategy and take action against the 'culprits'.The collectors have been directed to organise awareness camps at every block headquarters, where influential people should be invited.

IANS

Young MPs show they care

2007-04-14T22:21:00.000-07:00

Nitin Sethi, Times of India

GWALIOR: Not that one needs to travel deep into India to find it, but a few young MPs, cutting across party lines, decide to, nevertheless, trace the contours of malnourishment in the rural areas of Gwalior. Lack of nutrition makes 46% of children under the age of three underweight, says the third National Family Health Survey. Madhya Pradesh has the highest levels of malnourishment among children, and substantially worse than Gujarat and Meghalaya, the two other states with high levels of malnourishment. But the MPs are not tossing up the stats in a political cauldron. One just can't. It's a phenomenon entrenched long — and wide — enough in the hinterland to make all parties equally culpable. Sachin Pilot (Congress), Supriya Sule (NCP), Shahnawaz Hussain (BJP), Jay Panda (BJD) and Prema Cariappa (Congress) comprise the team. First official stop on the day-long tour and they learn visual evidence can hide or tell as much as statistics do. UNICEF is backing up the tour, with logistics and information. The district administration, aware of the visit, has tried to 'sanitise' the villages on the schedule. The Anganwadi centre, run under the government's Integrated Child Development Scheme, at the two villages that the MPs visit are working on the day. Villagers voice their issues well when they confront the MPs. The primary health centre at one village is freshly painted, the mattresses have just been brought in from the town and the ice and water too have been arranged for the visiting dignitaries. But the Anganwadi at Rampura village, the first official pit stop, is just like one of the 7.44 lakh Anganwadis under ICDS. It's got its attendant problems, but the village is right now too bothered about the lack of water for agriculture. "Get us water and we will sort out the rest,"says one villager to the team, which also has Peenaz Masani, the veteran singer, and Gauri Karnik, a budding actor. It's an expected statement but it underpins the fact about doles. No Anganwadi project can perpetually provide nutritional security to rural India. Nutritional and food security is a far larger political question of second-generation agrarian reforms. Till politics finds an answer to that question, Anganwadis and other programmes under ICDS remain key operational tactic to reduce malnutrition, albeit, an expensive tactic. The government's expenditure on ICDS has risen from Rs 1,444 crore in 2003-04 to Rs 4,087 crore in 2006-07, an annual growth of 41%. "We are not here to point out problems or mistakes; we are here to understand what causes such chronic malnourishment in India. This is just the first place we are visiting and it's not as if we have not seen the situation in our own regions but it's a collective effort by us to see if we can voice these concerns louder, at a greater level,"says Sachin Pilot. The journalists travelling with them are enthusiastic-sceptics: "So what will this lead to? What does this venture by the young MPs really mean for the people?"— they fire out the questions at the first given opportunity. "The problem is acute and it needs to be addressed in Parliament just as much as the media needs to put it out prominently in the public domain,"replies Sule. "If we can get it higher on national priority, a tad bit higher, we will achieve our bit,"she adds.

Madhya Pradesh nutrition policy draw activists' ire

2007-04-14T22:05:00.000-07:00

IANS

The Madhya Pradesh government's plan to enhance the nutritional value of food provided to children under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) is being met with skepticism by activists who question the new nutrition policy.The Madhya Pradesh government's plan to enhance the nutritional value of food provided to children under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) is being met with skepticism by activists who question the new nutrition policy.'The state government has decided to provide 20 different kinds of meal including kheer pudi, laddoo, mathri to the children in place of daliya (roasted gram).

The choice about the kind of meal would be made on the basis of local food habit in a particular area,' says Kusum Mehdele, women and child welfare minister. While the centre and the state government will share the expenses equally, the latter has set Rs.1.55 billion as its share.Funds for the policy has been increased to Rs.3 billion for the current fiscal (2007-08) as against Rs. 1.1 billion during fiscal 2006-07. Though Mehdele hopes that the policy would be a boon for the malnourished children, health activists don't agree with her.

'Do you think a child in 0-3 years age group who requires micro-nutrients would do well with halwa-puri?' asks Sachin Jain of Right to Food campaign.'We have been demanding since long that there should be at least two aanganwadi workers, each with one helper, at every centre, but to no avail.' But the minister denies that the government was unaware of the situation. According to her, the government has sanctioned opening of 9,914 aaganwadis or care centres under the ICDS during 2007-08 to take the facility to all the municipal corporations, municipalities and town local bodies. '

Also, a survey to identify poor children below six years, expectant and nursing mothers and girls has been carried out and supplementary diet of 10 gram proteins and 300 calories is given to them for at least 300 days,' said Mehdele.As many as 367 ICDS schemes are being run in the state. As part of the schemes, health check ups and vaccinations are being conducted every month.

Domestic Grey water reuse

2007-04-14T22:04:00.000-07:00

United News of IndiaDhar, July 19:

Grey water reuse is one of the alternatives of water resource management to overcome water scarcity. Grey water is defined as water emanating from bathroom, kitchen and laundry. The water from bathroom is collected and treated in simple filtration system. The advantages of household water reuse system are reduction in water requirements, availability of water for non-potable purposes, minimization of sewage generation and also helps save water. Treated grey water reuse system can also be used for flushing toilets and gardening.This is also being promoted by UNICEF in Ashram schools of Dhar and Jhabua. The simple water reuse household system was inaugurated by a child named Sartaj in presence of Cynthia de Windt, State Representative UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh at the house of Dr Samuel Godfrey Project Officer UNICEF. The installed domestic grey water reuse system can help treat 200 liters of grey water everyday and can be useful for irrigating plants and garden.

Communicating to bring about social change

2007-04-08T11:46:00.000-07:00

Anil Gulati

www.merinews.com
01 April 2007, Sunday
Views: 3444 Comments: 3

Conventional strategies which focus on the individual’s behaviour change may not work, these have to be more broad-based, which address the wide range of determinants in the individual’s environment and settings.

‘Meaning is not something that is delivered to people, it is made by them’. A perspective paper by Panos Institute, 1998 had mention of this statement, which still is true. Lot of debate and discussion is held in recent times on the issue on communication and in the meetings on the subject one often hears a term i.e. behaviour change communication.

The experts say that this is it. It is the need of the day especially in the states like Madhya Pradesh in India, which has challenges like high rates of malnutrition in children under three years of age, infant mortality, and has large incidences of diarrhea especially in children. Many of these could be addressed to great extent by following simple practices. The need is to communicate these practices in form of simple messages, in a manner wherein this acquired information turns into a positive action. It is well known today that, that colostrum feeding and exclusive breast feeding can help reduce infant mortality and malnutrition, hygiene practices can help prevent diarrhea, simple precautions can help prevent respiratory tract infection to the new born, but still somehow we are unable to get these across to all including people in rural and tribal areas.

Fact is that we are lagging behind. May be it is easier said, than done. May be individual wanting to make changes in his life, does not feel the need for that change or even if the urge is there but it is not so strong to turn it into motivation for action, or face resistance from family, peers and community. Many a time’s services are often inadequate for their needs or insensitive to their situation. The system often fails them. ‘I want to take my child for vaccination but health centre is closed’ said one mother in Sidhi district of Madhya Pradesh, similarly ‘I want to go to school but teachers sent us back after taking attendance’ - a young boy of 10 years mentioned it in the gram sabha in Shivpuri district . They may also face religious, cultural, economic, or social pressures or a lack of structural and legislative support-that constrain their freedom to choose healthy and safe options.

Strategies designed to improve individual lives focus only on the “individual” pushing them to change practices by defining them as wrong and right. Such strategies ‘many a times’ ignore that there exists an environment and the forces within the society which push them following practices or doing things that undermine their health or health of their child. For example in case of just creating awareness on prevention of HIV/AIDS may not work, if we do not take into account the social determinants, cultural sensitivities and deep seated inequalities within the system. One may need different strategies, which is possible and there may be threats but may be that is the reason why working for change on both macro and micro level would help. When strategies for behaviour change are formed we therefore need to think in much broader terms, keeping the real picture in mind and think beyond the individual behaviour change.

Conventional strategies which focus on the individual’s behavior change may not work, these have to be more broad-based, which address the wide range of determinants in the individual’s environment and settings. One cannot push for hand washing if there is no water, or they cannot afford the soap.

May be that is the reason rather than focusing on ‘individual behaviour change’ need of the day is to focus on social change. For communication professional the focus needs to be communication for social change, may be the individual issues would get diluted, in actual they may not be the real problems, may get addressed in the process for social change.
In the process of this kind of communication for social change such “enabling” strategies would intend to remove barriers or constraints to positive action or conversely could erect barriers or constraints to behaviour which one should not practice. A combination of approaches is therefore necessary to promote the individual’s capacity for action within a supportive environment and community.

Water management must to combat scarcity: UNICEF

2007-03-21T20:11:00.000-07:00

The Pioneer, March 22, 2007

The theme, 'Coping with water scarcity' on this year's World Water Day -March 22, highlights the increasing significance of water scarcity worldwide and the need for increased integration and cooperation to ensure sustainable, efficient and equitable management of water resources.
The theme is quite relevant for Madhya Pradesh where many districts face water scarcity and level of ground water are going down. Almost 25 per cent of the groundwater, which is the main source of water in Madhya Pradesh, are over exploited. The Central Groundwater Board (CGWB) in its report stated that the State is facing water scarcity problem due to ongoing over exploitation of sources and inadequate recharge structures.

A study by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) points out that increased number of private boreholes has led to over consumption of water at domestic level.
India is in grip of water crisis and International Water Management Institute (IWMI) estimates that by 2025 one third of India's population will suffer from severe water scarcity. According to IWMI estimation, India supports over 15 per cent of world's population but has only 4 per cent of the world's water resources.

State Representative UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh Hamid, El Bashir says that millions of people suffer every year from multiple episodes of diarrhoea and many other fall ill on account of other diseases caused by poor hygiene and unsafe drinking water, especially children. We need to bring the issue into focus not on just one day but every day and it is our call for action. According to NEERI 2006 report, approximately 60 per cent of water consumed in the household is from bathing. This water is known as is 'greywater' as it is not highly contaminated and easily treatable and reuseble.
UNICEF, in collaboration with Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) and NGOs have developed a system that recycles up to 200 litres of water per household for flushing toilets and for gardening. The system reduces the demand on groundwater by 60 per cent. At Ganaganagar ashram school in Dhar district, the reuse of greywater has resulted in for the first time during summer months of March, April and May 2006.

Bashir believes that it is imperative the State Government scales the wise water management statewide wherein UNICEF can bring on board experts both national and international to help draft the same plan. PHE department is already planning to build 1500 similar schemes.

Four women village heads felicitated

2007-03-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

Sahara Samay, Posted at Thursday, 08 March 2007 21:03 IST

Indore, March 8 : Four women village heads were honoured by the Madhya Pradesh government for their excellent performance under the UNICEF sponsored programme ‘Nirmal Village’, Sahara Samay sources said.During the UNICEF programme, a group of four village heads were travelled to Chennai and Mumbai through aeroplane, where they stayed in a five star hotel and learn about the western style toilet technique.The Deputy Commissioner Rajesh Shukla said that they were given tour package as an honour for their better performance.

Gritty women script stories of success

2007-03-10T10:40:00.000-08:00

Vanita Srivastava. Hindustan Times, March 8, 2007 - women's day special

TWENTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD Krishna of Tikariya village in Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh is a proud woman today. She is a primary school teacher in a government school. She is the ‘first’ girl of her village to have passed the 12th grade exam. The secondary school was very far from her village and one by one all her friends dropped out. Krishna, however, did not lose hope. Her father who had dropped out of school in grade seven knew how difficult it was to get a job without education.

He promised himself that he would educate all his children. Krishna would trudge several kilometers on foot to reach her school. Later, she started running night classes under the ‘Mahila Padhna-Badhna Andolan’. “Education enables us to express our thoughts and ideas to a wide spectrum of people,” she says. Krishna is one of the three women from the State who have been beautifully featured in ‘Girl Star’, UNICEF calendar of 2007, which focuses on those girls and women who have achieved something defying odds.

26-year-old Rupali Jain aka ‘Ruby’ runs a beauty parlour in Guna. After her father’s death, Rupali took over all the responsibilities of the family. She underwent training for a beautician’s course and also completed her Class XII exam. After that she did her BA. “My education helped me obtain a loan from the bank to open my parlour. Education is the only thing that helps a woman during hardship. It gives a woman the strength to brave challenges,” she says.

28-year-old Premlata Varma works as an accountant in the office of superintendent of police in Jhabua. She is the youngest in her department but has risen to this level through sheer hard work. She has four others working under her. Her grandmother who raised her was adamant that she should go to school although she had herself never been to a school. Premlata’s journey was, however, full of struggles.

As a child she used to collect water from a river for her neighbours and thus earned money both for her own and her sister’s education. She also had to look after her Nani (maternal grandmother) during her student days. Today, she has a masters in economics, a government job and lots of water in her house. “There was a time when I used to collect water from a river for others. Today, I have a house, a scooter and a tap for water,” she reminisces. The UNICEF calendar has some very beautiful pictures, which captures the strength of twelve different women from different areas of the country. Krishna, Premlata and Rupali are featured for the months of July, October and November respectively.

The calendar unveils the story of 12 ordinary women with special stories. All have written their own destiny by tasting the beauty of education.

Blogs becoming new fad to raise social issues

2007-02-24T06:23:00.000-08:00

The Pioneer, Bhopal edition Feb. 23, 2007

Blogs, which were earlier used to talk about ones work, travel or personal diaries, are now becoming new media platforms to raise social issues.

Blog is user-generated web pages, which an individual or a group generates to share views with people at large. If need be one can keep it private too. Many platforms like blogspot, wordpress, and rediff provide a facility to make blogs free of cost. You just need an email ID and you can do it. It is new techie now-a-days and thousand come up every day.

In a new trend in the State, people are increasingly making and using blogs to voice concern on social issues like maternal mortality, education, water, situation of children in the State.
There are some old one like www.safemotherhood.blogsopt.com. This is managed by the Campaign to Raise Concern on Maternal Deaths, which is working towards raising concern on the issue of high maternal deaths in the State. Many stories which have appeared in The Pioneer on the issue also feature in there, with due credit.

Blogs help to give expression to ones creative challenge, but one needs to devote time too shares view with it, says Anil Gulati, the Bhopal blogger. It is easy to make them but tough to maintain them, one gets pressurised to keep blogs fresh. I update them very regularly adds Gulati.

He contributes on blogs like www.newswhichmatter.blogspot.com, which focuses on news and view from the State and www.mpchildinfo.blogspot.com focusing on issues of women and children of the State. Both of them along with madhyapradesh.blogspot.com are mainly focussed on the State perspective. One on photographs from the State is http://madyapradesh1.blogspot.com is managed by Sandip, who is a freelance photographer.
Though this may be start but is a newer phenomenon to raise and share issues not only within the State but across on web world.

NGOs need to involve communities : Bashir

2007-02-17T07:48:00.000-08:00

Hindustan Times, Bhopal
HT Correspondent, Bhopal, February 16, 2007

A STATE-LEVEL meeting of campaign partners supporting the promotion of safe motherhood and raising concern on maternal mortality in Madhya Pradesh was held here on Friday.
More than 60 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) representing network organisations like Madhya Pradesh Voluntary Health Association, Madhya Pradesh Samaj Sewa Sanstha, Madhya Pradesh Jan Adhikar Manch, Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti, Central Regional Board of Health Services, Mahila Chetna Manch, Vikas Samvad, Department of Journalism, Makhan Lal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism shared their concern and outcomes of their efforts with communities and elected representatives.

Inaugurating the meeting, UNICEF Madhya Pradesh office State Representative Hamid El Bashir said civil society organisations should engage communities at a high level to push accountabilities within the system so that better care was delivered to women and children.
He added that Madhya Pradesh contributed to 10 per cent of maternal deaths in the country while India contributed 20 per cent of maternal deaths in the world. He said it was possible to reduce these deaths, but there was a need for sustained commitment to deliver for benefit of women and children in the State.

UNICEF Communication officer Anil Gulati spoke on the need for community empowerment and civil society’s engagement on the issue of women health. He said the media had helped to bring the issue to forefront but there was a need to take this momentum forward.

Makhan Lal Chaturvedi University of Journalism Department of Journalism’s PP Singh about the role of media in women’s health while Sachin Jain of Vikas Samvad stressed on media advocacy efforts in raising issues of women and child health.

Madhya Pradesh Voluntary Health Association’s Manoj Joshi, State Coordinator Jan Adhikar Manch Sandesh Bansal, Central Board of Regional Health Services Dr Sheela Bhambal, Mahila Chetna Manch Deep Damani, and Madhya Pradesh Samaj Sewa Sanstha Father Mathew and Sister Joicy spoke about their efforts in various parts of the State to help bring much needed momentum on the issue of maternal deaths and promoting safe motherhood state wide.

UNICEF Health Officer Dr Narayan Goankar presented the findings of maternal deaths audit in the districts of Guna and Shivpuri. UNICEF Planning officer Veena Bandyopadhyay presented a possible option of setting up of ‘Child Rights Observatory’ in Madhya Pradesh, which could act as a third party for monitoring rights of children and women. Himanshu Sikka of Infrastructure Professional Enterprise also participated in the meeting.

MP anganwadis provide nutritious food

2007-02-03T04:27:00.000-08:00

Rubina Khan Shapoo

Wednesday, January 24, 2007 (Shivpuri):

Madhya Pradesh has the highest level of malnutrition amongst children under six in India but here is a story on a mini revolution that's successfully fighting it. An NDTV Correspondent travelled to another historical hunger spot Shivpuri to find that with a little initiative not only can malnutrition be fought but set new benchmarks.

MP has now become the first state in the country that's providing a nutritious a la carte menu to its youngsters. Earlier the children could barely walk now they run. Their faces are lit with excitement as kids wait for surprise packet they get each day at the anganwadi centre in Badharwaas. One of the leader is 45-year-old Shakuntala, an anganwadi worker known to people as amma or chachi.

Special menu

Last year when the collector asked for suggestion to make the aanganwadi more attractive for children, Shakuntala Sharma and a few other workers suggested that apart from the standard panjiri and daliya, they cook different food items for the children. The recipes, which would not cost more than the prescribed Rs 2 per child daily and also meet the calorie requirements set out by the Supreme Court. That suggestion is now part of a daily routine.

From October 2006, Shivpuri is the only district in Madhya Pradesh, which has 15 different recipes under the supplementary nutrition programme at all the 25 centres where the aanganwadi workers have volunteered to cook. For cooking the special meals they get the money at the beginning of each month. The result is phenomenal, almost 220 of those registered in the centres actually come here every day a five times increase in attendance. "Earlier the number would fluctuate between 35-60. Now you come any day, you will find from pregnant ladies to children, all of them are present," said Shakuntala.

No malnutrition death

In fact Shakuntala proudly claims that in the last five years no child has died due to malnutrition. This in an area where malnutrition deaths were amongst the highest in the country. Shakuntala says she is not harassed for bribes by officers to get her salary nor does she have to beg them for supplies for the aanganwadi. If only Shivpuri could set an example for the rest of the state, where today there are 49,784 aanganwadi workers while the need is for nearly double that number. What's more that 50 per cent say they have not been paid and 70 per cent say they are harassed by senior officials. It is a situation the collector says they can reverse.

"We have a lot of interaction with the aanganwadi workers through our follow up camps, routine meetings and visits. We try to keep them motivated," said Manohar Aganani, collector, Shivpuri.
She is allowed to speak her mind and her views on improving the childcare system. On being asked the best part is her work is appreciated and these are great motivating factors that indeed make a huge difference in combating a severe problem like malnutrition.

Govt Schemes : It is same old story

2007-02-01T06:07:00.000-08:00

Sonia Khandelwal, Indore, January 23, 2007

THE LOFTY schemes of Madhya Pradesh government for promoting institutional deliveries — for bringing down Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) — need a reality check at ground level as was highlighted by an incident in a village in Barwani district raising several questions about awareness and implementation of these schemes.

Twentyone-year-old Santoshi Raju from Rajpur was referred to the District Hospital at Barwani for delivery, from where she was referred to M Y Hospital here as her blood pressure had increased to a dangerous level. Then started her traumatic journey of running from pillar to post.

“At Barwani, they (the doctors) asked us either to fill a consent form for taking responsibility of complicated delivery (which could mean threat to the lives of either the mother or the child or both) at Barwani or take her to Indore,” Santoshi’s husband Raju, a labourer, told Hindustan Times at the post natal ward.
Not ready to take risk at Barwani, Raju asked Barwani Civil Surgeon Dr B K Sawner to provide him ambulance to take Santoshi to Indore. “But as we did not have Deendayal Antyoday Yojana card, the doctor did not agree for the ambulance,” Raju added.
However, Deendayal Yojana card is not required for ambulance service. Despite repeated requests when the hospital authorities did not agree, an Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) from Rajpur Sarika Gopal Mukesh, who had accompanied them to Barwani, suggested taking Santoshi back to Rajpur.
By this time, Raju, whose family comes under BPL, was penniless and collected funds from donors to take Santoshi back to Rajpur.

Fortunately, the PHC there provided an ambulance and Santoshi was brought to MY Hospital here on time, where she delivered a girl late Thursday night.The incident has exposed the cracks in the system and brings out the true picture painted by the actual implementation of the various welfare schemes of the state government. To start with, Sarika, an ASHA, did not have proper information about Janani Suraksha Yojana, wherein she is supposed to get Rs 600 for bringing any expectant mother to a health facility. Not just this one scheme, she was not aware of many other schemes.

“I have not heard about Janani Suraksha Yojana but during our training, we were told only about our incentives and basic work. They (trainers) never told us about how to tackle serious situations and also about facilities available like ambulance service for taking expecting women to a health facility,” Sarika told Hindustan Times at MY Hospital here.
When asked why the family had no Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana card, Sarika further said, “Almost 50 per cent of the people in our village (Rajpur) do not have this card as on today. The cards are being prepared for a long time and hence not distributed.” Higher medical officials do not want to take any responsibility and have been passing the buck when it came to pinning down the person responsible for such an incident. Barwani Chief Medical and Health Officer (CMHO) Dr Lakshmi Baghel, when contacted on telephone about the incident, said, “As far as I am concerned, we had organised fairs and programmes to create awareness about Janani Suraksha Yojana at all the villages under our jurisdiction. If the volunteers are still unaware about it, we will try to create more awareness about it.”

Dr Sawner when contacted over telephone first said “I had given permission for providing ambulance to Santoshi”, only to retract later saying “Santoshi was referred to Indore by Barwani District Hospital gynaecologist Dr Sushila Kumrawat. Santoshi’s relatives did not approach me for ambulance.”
The above incident raises several questions. Like inadequate training of ASHAs, no proper publicity about various schemes of the government amid the target group; officials not bothered about proper implementation of schemes and last but not the least lack of awareness on part of the individual (here both Santoshi and Raju are illiterate) about their rights and the facilities available for them.

'Play Pumps' installed in MP schools

2007-01-25T05:26:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, January 17, 2007 (13:41:08)'Play Pumps' installed in MP schools

By Sanjay Sharma

Bhopal: School is a happy proposition now for many children in Madhya Pradesh. No longer do they have to stay with parched throats or go without using toilets the whole day. In Dhar district, where many children - particularly girls - had stopped going to school for want of drinking water and sanitation facilities, Unicef has helped install 'play pumps' in educational institutions. The 'play pump' is a children's merry-go-round that pumps out clean, safe drinking water from a deep borehole every time it is spun. "Since cavorting on a roundabout has always been fun for children, they enjoy doing it and clean borehole water is pumped into water storage tanks," explained Unicef communications officer Anil Gulati. So Unicef, which has helped the district administration provide the play pumps, has not only solved the water problem but also brought in a means of entertainment for schoolchildren. "Earlier I used to run away from school for want of water and bathrooms, but now I don't feel like going back home because we have this facility there and can play with it as well," said Kavita, a tribal girl studying in Class 8.
The children earlier used to go without drinking water during the day, with 90 percent of schools in Dhar having no potable water or sanitation facilities. "The play pumps project was started on an experimental basis in March 2005. Since then several such pumps have been installed in districts like Dhar, Jhabua, Vidisha and Guna. There are plans to provide 40 such pumps in different parts of the state," said Samuel Godfrey, a Unicef official. The water pumped into tanks - the process doesn't require electricity - is distributed among schools and communities in the area.

The device is thus a boon not only for schoolchildren but also for the people living in the surroundings, mainly women who have the responsibility of collecting water. "Each morning the women used to set off to the nearest borehole to collect water. They used leaky and often contaminated hand-pumps to collect water and then carry it all back. It was exhausting and time-consuming work. Now they can spend the same time at home looking after their kids and teaching them," Gulati said.

The groundwater level in these districts is too low and whatever little water is available is highly contaminated with fluoride. The water table has fallen from an average of 10 metres to 80 metres. This has led to higher concentration of contaminants like fluoride, arsenic and iron in groundwater. A total of 324 villages are affected with this problem in tribal-dominated Dhar district alone.

Unicef and the state's Public Health Engineering Department are promoting projects on water reuse, water safety and sanitation in 22 schools of Dhar and Jhabua. Children participating in a convention on water security and sanitation in Bhopal this week expressed their happiness by presenting the very songs they sing while playing with the pumps in their schools in Dhar.
They also performed plays on different themes, including re-using water, water safety, rainwater harvesting and sanitation. "Such projects, aimed at promoting recycling of grey water for its reuse in improving sanitation, are being implemented in the tribal schools of Dhar. These also promote rain water harvesting and increase the focus on sanitation," said Unicef state representative Hamid El Bashir.

(IANS)

Grassroot reporting by grassroot children

2007-01-21T00:31:00.000-08:00

Vanita Srivastava
Hindustan Times, Bhopal, January14

Eighteen-year-old Kamod Singh Ahirwar of Chechli village in Sohapur tehsil of Hoshangabad district candidly narrates all the problems of his village. From lackadaisical teaching staff to poor electricity supply to sanitation. He forks them out with ease. Ninth standard student Lal Singh of Gundaria hamlet rattles out the same problems but with different tone. He emphasizes on the need to have good teachers in schools.

Both Kamod and Lal Singh are abreast with the problems that plague their villages. But they need a platform to delineate them. Both understand the strength of pen and have a desire to write their woes so that it reaches the person vested with authority.

The two are among the 35-40 child reporters selected between the age group 11-18 by the Dalit Sangh, an organization that works for the socially oppressed communities in Sohagpur. The Sangh with the help of UNICEF is going to take out a quarterly Newsletter which would be in toto written by children of five villages Jamonia, Semri Harchan, Gundavai, Turakhapa and Chicli. A large chunk would be children of the backward communities Pardi and Sapera.

Enumerating the details Dr Authey Gopal, Chief Functionary Officer of Dalit Sangh in Sohagpur said " the objective was to give them a dais to spell out their problems." The first issue of the four paged edition would be released in March and is likely to have 30-40 news stories.

More than 200 names had come from the government schools of the five villages. A written test was thereafter conducted to prune the students on the basis of their writing and expressive skills. The test themed on five subjects asked the children to write on a subject of their choice, a model village, newspaper, problem of village and sanitation.

Several interesting facets came to fore during the tests, Dr Gopal said adding " Like for instance one of the girls said that Chichli village has been notified as a model village by the government but the hamlet does not have any drain." A workshop conducted by some selected journalists would train the child reporters on the nitty- gritty of journalism. They will also be trained in making cartoons by experts. Barring the grammatical mistakes which would be corrected, the news would not be edited and would be placed as such to retain the originality and simplicity, he said.

The child reporters would also get an opportunity to interview administrative authorities including the sarpanch and the collector. How successful the newsletter will be is yet to be seen. But for Kanmod Singh and Lal Singh this could be an opportunity to disseminate their problems to someone who can 'redress' them.

Tribal kids come forward to sketch means of water conservation in Dhar

2007-01-17T08:07:00.000-08:00

Published in The Pioneer, January 17, 2007

Staff Reporter Bhopal

A children's convention on the theme of sanitation and water was organised at Dhar. It was Dhar's first such meet on issues like water and sanitation. It was organised by Vasudha Vikas Sansthan with support from UNICEF, district administration, Public health engineering department and tribal welfare department.

More than 200 hundred children from various tribal villages participated in the same. Children enacted dramas, songs and plays on the theme of water reuse, water safety, rain water harvesting, and sanitation.

They also sang a song based on a play pump installed by UNICEF in tribal schools of Dhar. This is a unique play pump which pumps water to the tank while children play in the same.
This water when pumped up to the tank, without use of electricity can then be wisely distributed and used both by communities and for schools.

Present at the event was UNICEF State representative Hamid El Bashir who interacted with the children and appreciated their efforts. He said that UNICEF remains committed and with support from public health engineering department it is keen to take this 'to scale' so that we can cover as many districts as possible.

Lizette Burgers Chief Water and Environmental Sanitation UNICEF Delhi present especially for the occasion said this is a good example of including children and young people and in driving positive change towards sanitation and water within communities.
District Collector Dhar RK Gupta encouraged the participating children and presented prizes to winners of the various events held during last week which commenced in this children convention today.

Dr Samuel Godfrey, Project Officer Water and Environmental Sanitation, UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh said that innovations like are being implemented in tribal schools of Dhar and are aimed to promote recycle grey water for its reuse in improving sanitation. Children also painted a thirty meter flex on various themes on issue related to water and sanitation at end of the convention.

Turning water into child's play in parched schools

2007-01-17T08:03:00.000-08:00

By Sanjay Sharma, Indo-Asian News service, [RxPG] Bhopal, Jan 17 -

They also performed plays on different themes, including re-using water, water safety, rainwater harvesting and sanitation..

School is a happy proposition now for many children in Madhya Pradesh. No longer do they have to stay with parched throats or go without using toilets the whole day.In Dhar district, where many children - particularly girls - had stopped going to school for want of drinking water and sanitation facilities, Unicef has helped install 'play pumps' in educational institutions.

The 'play pump' is a children's merry-go-round that pumps out clean, safe drinking water from a deep borehole every time it is spun.'Since cavorting on a roundabout has always been fun for children, they enjoy doing it and clean borehole water is pumped into water storage tanks,' explained Unicef communications officer Anil Gulati.

So Unicef, which has helped the district administration provide the play pumps, has not only solved the water problem but also brought in a means of entertainment for schoolchildren.'Earlier I used to run away from school for want of water and bathrooms, but now I don't feel like going back home because we have this facility there and can play with it as well,' said Kavita, a tribal girl studying in Class 8.

The children earlier used to go without drinking water during the day, with 90 percent of schools in Dhar having no potable water or sanitation facilities.'The play pumps project was started on an experimental basis in March 2005. Since then several such pumps have been installed in districts like Dhar, Jhabua, Vidisha and Guna. There are plans to provide 40 such pumps in different parts of the state,' said Samuel Godfrey, a Unicef official.

The water pumped into tanks - the process doesn't require electricity - is distributed among schools and communities in the area.The device is thus a boon not only for schoolchildren but also for the people living in the surroundings, mainly women who have the responsibility of collecting water.'Each morning the women used to set off to the nearest borehole to collect water. They used leaky and often contaminated hand-pumps to collect water and then carry it all back. It was exhausting and time-consuming work. Now they can spend the same time at home looking after their kids and teaching them,' Gulati said.

The groundwater level in these districts is too low and whatever little water is available is highly contaminated with fluoride.The water table has fallen from an average of 10 metres to 80 metres. This has led to higher concentration of contaminants like fluoride, arsenic and iron in groundwater. A total of 324 villages are affected with this problem in tribal-dominated Dhar district alone.Unicef and the state's Public Health Engineering Department are promoting projects on water reuse, water safety and sanitation in 22 schools of Dhar and Jhabua.

Children participating in a convention on water security and sanitation here this week expressed their happiness by presenting the very songs they sing while playing with the pumps in their schools in Dhar.They also performed plays on different themes, including re-using water, water safety, rainwater harvesting and sanitation.'Such projects, aimed at promoting recycling of grey water for its reuse in improving sanitation, are being implemented in the tribal schools of Dhar. These also promote rain water harvesting and increase the focus on sanitation,' said Unicef state representative Hamid El Bashir.

It was Children's Turn on Radio in Bhopal

2007-01-13T20:16:00.000-08:00

by Anil Gulati

It was second Sunday of December and reins of all the programs broadcast by the All India Radio Bhopal were in hands of children. The occasion was to mark International Children's Broadcasting day. Right from the early morning greetings (Vande Mataram) children managed all the programs through out the day. Whether it was thought of the day or news, or conducting proceedings of the day it was children who managed the show and that too immaculately. Various drama and song based programs were also aired the same day which were based on the theme.
The International Children's Day of Broadcasting was launched in 1992 to provide a day that allows children to be seen and heard on the airwaves. It is now celebrated around the world on Second Sunday of December every year.

The theme for this year's International Children's Day of Broadcasting was Unite for Children, Unite against AIDS. AIR Bhopal and UNICEF in an effort to bring voice of children to forefront support children to be as anchors, presenters, and even producers on this occasion.

To take the enthusiasm forward All India Radio in partnership with UNICEF had organized a special children's evening with Governor of Madhya Pradesh at Bhopal on December 19, 2006. More than 250 children from districts of Bhopal, Guna, Shivpuri and Hoshangabad of Madhya Pradesh participated. It was an opportunity for them to speak and also showcase their talent. The entire programme was managed by children. Children had an opportunity to question and raise their concern with Honorable Governor of Madhya Pradesh i.e. head of the state on issues which impact them. A group of school children participating in the programme questioned Governor about issues like child labor, HIV/AIDS, education for girls, facilities for poor children, disabled and children affected with HIV/AIDS. Governor candidly replied to their questions.
Dr Balram Jhakar Governor of Madhya Pradesh, UNICEF State Representative Hamid El Bashir and AIR Station Director also spoke on the day. Governor in his address to children at the occasion said that future of country lies in their hands. He called on the Government on the need to protect them give them all they deserved. He urged state to help overcome poverty, child labor and make sure that every child goes to school.

Hamid El Bashir State Representative of UNICEF's office for Madhya Pradesh spoke on the theme of the broadcasting day. He in his address spoke on the rights of children affected and impacted by HIV/AIDS and a need for them to be protected. He spoke on the impact of HIV/AIDS on children and about the campaign Unite for Children, Unite against AIDS. He added that the campaign calls for the young people of Madhya Pradesh and the rest of India to become alive to the cause of children affected by HIV/AIDS, to alert society to the reality that HIV/AIDS which is robbing tens of millions of children of their childhood. A copy of UNICEF's State of World's Children report 2007 was also presented to the Governor. Ms Salina Singh Project Director Madhya Pradesh State Aids Control Society, Mrs. Asha Shukla, Station Director All India Radio were also present at the occasion. In addition to this events AIR Bhopal also undertakes a regular weekly programme for children which is aired around the year.

VIKAS SAMVAD ANNOUNCES FOUR MEDIA FELLOWSHIPS

2007-01-05T19:52:00.000-08:00

Vikas Samvad, a media advocacy group in Madhya Pradesh has called for application for third media fellowships for the mainstream hindi journalists from Madhya Pradesh. These fellowships are being supported by UNICEF, The Hunger Project and Action Aid. These fellowships will be provided to those four journalists who are willing to work on any of these following issues on a full time basis for one year in Madhya Pradesh-

- Women in Panchayati Raj and their political leadership for social change
- Women and Child rights (with special reference to Health Rights)
- Social Exclusion and Discrimination
- Universalisation of Education with qualityThese fellows will be selected by an independent jury.

This selection committee includes senior and eminent journalists/editors from Madhya Pradesh and social workers. Interested Journalists may obtain application formats from below mentioned address

Vikas Samvad
E-7/226, First Floor, Opp. Dhanvantri Complex, Arera Colony, Shahpura, Bhopal
Email- vikassamvad@gmail.com

The last date for the submission of application is 10th January 2007. For forms please contact at above address and email.

Only 13.9 pc schools have toilets in MP

2007-01-05T19:49:00.000-08:00

Published in the Pioneer

Bhopal, Jan 04 : Only 13.9 percent of schools in Madhya Pradesh have toilets for girls in schools at the primary level. The findings of the State Report Cards based on the figures of the year 2004-05 on the status of elementary Education in India complied by National Institute of Educational planning and administration, are revealing.

These school report cards are based on data received from 1.04 million schools spread over 58 districts in 29 states and Union Territories (UTs). This data is not only about education but also talks of many facts, which influence education in India.The report card analysis mentions that only 33.7 percent schools in category of primary and upper primary schools have girls' toilets. This is important, as a reducing gender gap is one of the major challenges, which state faces when it comes to education. Data also reveals that 11.1 percent schools are single classroom school and 26.7 percent are single teacher schools. Though state survey say that state has good enrolment rates but providing quality education and retaining children to school is an issue, probably educationist says that factors like these have huge impact on the quality of education and preventing drop out which are an issue in this state.

According to Census 2001, the Percentage of children aged 6 to 13 years attending school was found satisfactory at 66.8 percent (female) and 76 percent (male). The percentage of children in the age group of 11-13 years completing primary education was 45.8 (female), and 55 percent (male).Archana Sahay of voluntary orgnaisation 'Arambh' opined that toilet for girl students, is an essential facility in schools. The school education department should look into this problem on priority basis while education at primary level is being encouraged in the state, she added. She informed that there are over 10.50 lakh children out of school in the state, but surprisingly, the government has almost a decade old figures of only 2.50 lakh.

The government had last year launched a special campaign 'School Chalo' in the state for encouraging education in Madhya Pradesh, particularly in rural areas. State Education Centre Commissioner MK Singh said that in all the new school buildings toilets for girls are being constructed, while in the old school buildings, the facility of toilet and pure drinking water is being provided under 'Total Sanitation drive'

Tackling the Water Crisis

2007-01-05T19:42:00.000-08:00

Mini Sharma

There is a water crisis in India, but it is particularly pressing in some states more than in others - Madhya Pradesh, for instance. The country's infrastructure for basic supplies of water for drinking and sanitation is seriously wanting, even as urban and industrial water needs increase exponentially with every passing year.

In Madhya Pradesh (MP), there is acute shortage of water in 22 of the 48 districts. Short of a complete overhaul of existing supply systems, the solutions are deliverable but necessarily less than adequate. Fortunately, efforts towards water management throughout the state, with support from UNICEF, have started yielding results better than in the past. The water conservation drive initiated by the state government in 2002, called Jalabhishek Abhiyan, is doing well in the rural areas.

What has been nationally recognized is that the future of the country's food security and the quality of the lives and livelihood of its people depends on the collective ability to conserve and utilize groundwater resources in an environmentally-friendly, economically-efficient and socially-equitable manner.The MP government is also financially assisting villagers to develop ponds, which is one of the moves towards maintaining a balance in a depleting water table. Dr Sam Godfrey, UNICEF's project officer for water and sanitation, says, "A holistic approach that involves rooftop rainwater harvesting, grey-water recycling, and reduced groundwater abstraction will solve the quality as well as the quantity demands of the state."

The average rainfall in MP is 800 mm. High rainfall between 1,100-2,200 mm occurs in the Seoni, Balaghat, Umaria, Katni, Sidhi, Panna and Satna districts; low rainfall (below 600 mm) occurs in Ratlam, Ujjain, Barwani, Khargone, Rajgarh, etc.

A good part of the land suffers from rock desiccation. A fifth of the state's area is underlain by granite gneisses and meta-sedimentary rocks; a tenth is covered by the Gondwanas, which comprise of sandstone, limestone and marble.

Tube-wells and hand-pumps are rendered useless particularly in the summer, when groundwater levels drop below 200 meters in several districts. This is when lakhs of people become dependent on conventional water sources such as ponds, bawalis (step-wells) and rivers.

The situation is so chronic that people's representatives have repeatedly raised the water crisis specter in the State Assembly, forcing the government to declare three districts - Panna, Chhattarpur and Tikamgarh - drought-hit immediately after the end of the rainy season. (When did this happen?) The groundwater level has dropped below 150 meters in these districts, for which the government has announced special financial packages for construction of ponds and water transportation facilities.

Brijendra Singh Rathore, a legislator, says that the situation in Tikamgarh district worsens every year. Despite average rainfall, nothing much has changed. Merely transporting water from nearby districts is not the solution, he says: rainwater needs to be utilized properly.
This problem is serious enough for the state to have recently gone on a water conservation drive involving grey-water reuse and rainwater harvesting. An engineer of the state's Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) claimed that awareness is being created among citizens towards water conservation.In the most basic architectural terms, this entails the construction of a special structure on the rooftops of buildings, from where rainwater debouches into an over-ground or underground water tank. This water is used for non-potable purposes such as gardening and in bathrooms.

Technological simplicity is the keyword. In the state's Dhar and Jhabua districts, UNICEF and the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur, have designed and implemented water management schemes that are simple enough to be operated and maintained by children's water safety clubs.These clubs have reduced water demand by 60 per cent in tribal 'ashram schools', and have been highlighted by the PHED as worth replicating throughout the state.

Pinky Bhawar, a student of class 10 in a government school in Dhar district, who shares a tribal hostel with 275 other girls, is member of a water safety club in her hostel. The club not only discusses matters of awareness of water conservation and reuse, but also helps the hostel maintain the system and keep it clean.The water reuse system in Pinky's hostel recycles wastewater from bathroom use and washing hands and reuses it for gardening and flushing toilets. The hostel also has a rainwater harvesting system in place. Apart from showcasing the fact that development functions best when it percolates down, it also means that the girls at the hostel get extra water to bathe every day.

December 24, 2006

Children raise their concern with Governor

2006-12-19T16:44:00.000-08:00

Published in Central Chronicle December 21, 2006

By Our Staff Reporter
Bhopal, Dec 19: AIR with support from UNICEF as part of International Children's Day of broadcasting celebration had organized an event at Bhopal wherein more than 250 children had participated. It was an opportunity for the to showcase their talents. The whole programme was managed by children. Prior to this on the International Children's Day of Broadcasting that is December 10, 2006 full radio station was managed by children.

Governor Dr Balram Jakhar was the chief guest of the occasion. Children asked him numerous questions relating to child labour, education, HIV/ AIDS, which he candidly answered.
He is his address said that children are future of this country and need is to protect them give them all they deserved. The future of country lies in their hands and we need to overcome poverty, child labor and make sure that ever child goes to school.

Hamdi El Bashir State Representative UNICEF office fro Madhya Pradesh spoke about the theme of this years ICDB which is 'Unite for Children Unite against AIDS'. He added that children affected and impacted by HIV/AIDS have rights and they need to be protected. He spoke on the impact of HIV/AIDS on children and about the campaign. He added that the campaign calls for the young people of Madhya Pradesh and the rest of India to become alive to the cause of children affected by HIV/AIDS, to alert society to the reality that HIV/AIDS is robbing tens of millions of children of their childhood. He present a copy of UNICEF's State of World's Children report 2007 to the Governor.

Ms Salina Singh Project Director Madhya Pradesh State Aids Control Society, Mrs. Asha Shukla, Station Director All India Radio, Anil Gulati Communication Officer UNICEF were also present. Children from Bhopal, Guna, Shivpuri and Hoshangabad participated in the event.

http://www.centralchronicle.com/20061220/2012021.htm

Youth for noble cause

2006-12-19T16:40:00.000-08:00

Indo Asian News ServiceBhopal, December 19, 2006

Youth for a noble causeUnite for Children, Unite Against AIDS aims at engaging the young to prevent the spread of the diseaseThe programme aims to achieve results in preventing parent-to-child transmission, providing pediatric treatment to affected children and providing treatment to affected childrenThe programme is in association with Unicef and the Madhya Pradesh State AIDS Control Society

Hundreds of students in Madhya Pradesh took part in an AIDS awareness campaign and vowed to do their bit to control the fatal virus.The students tied suraksha bandhan (protection bands) on their wrists on Sunday to symbolise their awareness of HIV and their commitment to spread awareness on HIV and AIDS.

The students were participants in a workshop organised by the Makhanlal Chaturvedi University of Journalism in Bhopal as part of a ‘Unite for Children, Unite Against AIDS’ drive aimed at engaging the young to prevent the deadly disease. The campaign, in association with the Madhya Pradesh State AIDS Control Society (MPSACS) and Unicef, aims to achieve measurable results in preventing parent-to-child transmission, providing pediatric treatment for HIV children, preventing HIV infection among the youth and providing treatment for affected children. “We need to be equipped with the right knowledge and young people can help spread awareness and the right information,” said Unicef state representative Hamid El Bashir. He said that worldwide millions of children, adolescents and youngsters are at risk and in need of protection. Across the world millions of children under the age of 15 have lost one or both parents to AIDS. “More disturbing is that HIV/AIDS is now engulfing the ‘productive population’ in the age group of 20-40 years. With the exposure teens and youth are getting through television, they have started experimenting with sex at an early age, further aggravating the problem,” said an MPSACS official

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/7087_1872703,00870000.htm