The Srimati Malati Dahnukar trust has been working towards eradication of malnutrition by educating mothers, providing fortified food to children and training the health workers
Ashwini Dhokchowle, a homemaker who lives in the Tilak Nagar locality in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district, does not get tired of telling people how her one-year-old firstborn Shivtej started eating eggs when he was just six months old. The healthy baby now weighs 11.45 kg when the average weight of children his age is 9.5 kilos. At 77 cm, he is also 2 cm taller than other children his age. “I came to the care centre when my son was three months old and would constantly vomit,” says Ashwini, a graduate in agriculture. “The doctors designed a nutrition plan for me and him, turning us fit and healthy.”
Long before the health ministry announced a policy to provide fortified rice to school children under the mid-day meal scheme, the care centre Ashwini went to and which is run by the Shrimati Malati Dahanukar Trust (SMDT), was already providing it to toddlers.
It was a candid conversation between Shivani Dahanukar, a trustee of SMDT, and her nutritionist friend Dr Rupal Dalal, that led SMDT to begin work in the field of malnutrition in 2010. “I had asked Rupal whether we could hold a medical camp at Tilak Nagar,” says Dahanukar, whose family runs a distillery there. “Rupal came up with the idea to focus on malnutrition instead,” she says. Since then, the SMDT has provided nutrition tips and food to close to 11,000 pregnant women, lactating mothers and their children from 52 nearby localities.
The SMDT provides care for the mother and child for the first 1,000 days from the date of pregnancy and, if required, the child is monitored up to five years of age. As a result, you won’t hear of any child suffering from SAM (severe acute malnutrition) or MAM (moderate acute malnutrition) in these 52 localities, inhabited mostly by labourers and other workers. On an average, SMDT workers visit 10 families daily to seek out needy mothers and children. “We convince the mothers-in-law in every family to go for our nutrition programme. This has gone a long way in making mothers and children healthy,” says Sheetal Hiwale, a field officer.
With help from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, SMDT has made 18 charts in graphic and audio-visual formats to educate mothers. The trust’s experts have designed several recipes on how homegrown vegetables can be used to fortify rice. They also focus on removing misconceptions around breastfeeding. “The programme is all about empowering women on their own and the babies’ health. We insist on breastfeeding for mothers to realise their strength,” says Dahanukar.
SMDT also trains ASHA and anganwadi workers to find malnourished children and counsel their mothers under its ‘Teach the Trainer’ programme. The trust has conducted training sessions in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh so far. It has also set itself the target of freeing Rajura, India’s most malnourished area located in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal, of malnutrition. With IIT Bombay’s help, it has devised a plan to divide Rajura in six blocks and focus on each block separately to monitor the children. The plan is ready but yet to be launched. It is people like Ashwini who keep Dahanukar going. Even though she is financially well-off, Ashwini wouldn’t go anywhere else for Shivtej’s treatment. “It is trust that makes me want to associate with the SMDT,” says Dhokchowle. Dahanukar credits their strong and dedicated team for busting myths about nutrition. (MANISH)
