Abstract: Village Health and Nutrition Days (VHNDs) are a major initiative access to maternal, newborn, child health and nutrition (MNCHN) services at the village level. Across the country, VHNDs are intended to occur in every village once a month usually at the Anganwadi Centre (AWC) or other suitable location. AWCs are a central feature of the Ministry of Women and Child Development’s flagship Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme. VHNDs provide a basket of health and nutrition services and counselling to the community on a pre-designated day, time and place. The study was undertaken in selected 8 villages of Primary Health Centre, Bahadarabad of district Haridwar in Uttarakhand. Based on the population of the respective villages and the norm of selecting an ASHA for approximately 1000 population, 20 ASHA have been selected in these 8 villages. All of these ASHA had undergone the initial induction training on VHNC.The study found that all VHNDs were organized at Anganwadi centers which are well-known place for everyone in the community. The day (Saturday) has already fixed however time and duration were not well communicate to the community. Generally, VHND were organized between 11 am to 2 pm however many places, providers changes the time of VHND which decreases the participation of the clients. The study also indicated that in the selected village, VHNC members also not aware about VHSNC and also not playing any role in VHND. All VHNDs attracted pregnant and lactating women, children below 5 years and adolescent girls from the villages. Awareness was widespread: majority of percent of currently pregnant women knew of VHNDs. The vast majority of these women knew both the date and location of VHNDs in their area. Pregnant and recently delivered women attended VHNDs in large numbers however they did not received a variety of services. Seventy-five percent of recently delivered women in the selected villages had availed limited services during VHNDs.
It is important to strengthen multiple systems to achieve improvements in VHNDs. Efforts focused on orienting CHC and PHC in charge and frontline workers to the guidelines and their roles, strengthening supervision, using a structured checklist to monitor VHNDs, using data for programmatic decision-making and ensuring platforms for convergence. All of these aspects collectively contributed to increasing the coverage and quality of VHNDs.
Keywords: Nutrition Day, Anganwadi Centre, Village Health and Nutrition Days.
Title: Qualitative Assessment of Village Health Nutrition Day in the Selected Areas of Uttarakhand
Author: Dr. V. D. Semwal, Dr. Rajeev Bijalwan, Dr. Poonam Rawat
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online)
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