For nutrition security there has to be awareness and access at affordable cost to food security (balanced diet and right feeding practices for infants and children), safe drinking water and disease free environment and health care outreach. Over the past decade we have been promoting awareness on health, food and nutrition issues, specifically targeting pregnant women, and mothers with 6 to 24 months old children in villages of Medak district, Telangana state of South India. Other inputs are: homestead gardens with micronutrient dense vegetables and fruits, backyard poultry with high egg-yielding birds, and food processing, preparation of ready to cook complementary food. Impact is assessed through KAP surveys of mothers initially and end-line, acceptance of crop diversification, and BY poultry, and improvement in family diet. Teaching aids like simple pamphlets in local language Telugu helped during the pandemic when centralised meetings could not be held. Results are very encouraging. The work is discussed in the attached paper.
Dr. Mahtab S.Bamji