Shillong: Meghalaya is hoping to reverse the staggering number of stunted children through the implementation of the nutritional campaign, Poshan Abhiyaan and Rashtriya Poshan Maah.

According to the National Family Health Survey 4, the percentage of stunted children below five years of age is 43.8 per cent against the national average of 38.4 per cent.

Underweight children below five years is 29 per cent against the countrywide average of 35.7 per cent. Anaemia among children below five years in Meghalaya is 40.7 per cent while the national average is 58.4 per cent.

The objective of the campaign is to eliminate malnutrition in the country by 2022. To achieve this mega objective, all line departments will have to work in convergence mode. In Meghalaya, the departments include social welfare, education, public health engineering, food and civil supplies, health and community and rural development.

Apart from eliminating malnutrition, the programme will focus on reducing stunting, under-nutrition and anaemia, among others.

Social welfare commissioner and secretary T. Dkhar said Meghalaya faces serious issues of malnutrition, stunting and anaemia. He called upon the people to be involved in the mission so the objectives can be fully realised.

The programme intends to reduce stunting, under-nutrition, anaemia (among young children, women and adolescent girls) and low birth weight by two per cent, two per cent, three per cent and two per cent per annum respectively.

For this programme, Meghalaya has already received around Rs 11 crore.

Dkhar said the programme will comprise mapping of various schemes contributing towards addressing malnutrition, including a very robust convergence mechanism, real-time monitoring system, incentivising states for meeting targets, incentivising Anganwadi workers for using IT-based tools and introducing measurement of height of children at Anganwadi centres, among others.