Use Of Mother Child Protection Card For Improving Nutritional Status Of Under Three Children

Abstract

Under-nutrition rates in under-five children continue to be high. For the last four decades, India had invested in interventions for improving household food security, supplementary feeding programmes and health care to pre-school children. Poor infant and young child feeding and caring practices had been identified as the major modifiable factors associated with under-nutrition especially in the critical first two years. Mother Child Protection Card (MCPC) was introduced as the critical intervention tool for combating these two factors and improving nutritional status of the children. As ICDS programme envisaged monthly weighing and monitoring of growth in under-three children for early detection of under-nutrition, it is feasible as accurate portable digital balances are available in anganwadi and Mother Child Production Card (MCPC) with child growth charts has been provided to children. A community based mixed longitudinal study was taken up in under-three children from urban low middle income families to assess feasibility of providing MCPC to all mothers of under three children assess accessibility at time of follow-up, impact of growth monitoring and appropriate nutrition education using MCPC and assess whether use of modified mother child protection card help in demonstrating to the mother relationship between wrong IYCF and poor growth and infection and growth faltering. newlineMonthly weighing of children and plotting the weight-for-age in the MCPC was carried out by the research staff. A total of 5708 children were enrolled and followed up over 32879 visits between 2015 and 2019. Mothers readily accepted MCPC, kept it safely and produced it when requested. MCPC with authentic pictorial messages was used by all health and nutrition front line workers and research team; this practice ensured uniformity in nutrition and health education messages. Plotting the weight-for-age of the child in growth chart enabled identification of underweight children at the time of the visit so that appropriate nutrition and health