Chandigarh, August 9
One-fourth of the total number of children enrolled with Haryana’s anganwaris are anaemic. This startling revelation has come to light during a survey of anganwaris conducted under Indira Bal Swasthya Yojna (IBSY).

Of the 16,000 anganwaris covered under Phase II of the scheme so far, the survey has found that 2.19 lakh of the 9.15 lakh children are anaemic, implying that 26 per cent of the total children examined are suffering from iron deficiency.

While the survey has found 4,700 cases of severe anaemia, there are 86,000 cases of moderate anaemia and 1.26 lakh children ( up to five years) suffer from mild anaemia.

The Mission Director, National Rural Health Mission, PK Das, says the challenge before the departments of health, education and women and child development, collaborating on this project, is to ensure that the mild and moderate cases do not turn into severely anaemic cases. “From what we have understood, anaemia is more prevalant because of poor sanitation and unhygienic food rather than its non-availability. At a meeting last week ,where the data of the survey was studied, the mission decided to launch a multi-pronged offensive by not distributing iron and folic acid tablets and initiating a mass awareness campaign with the help of several departments,” he explains.

While anaemia is the major malady afflicting children, the survey has also brought other ailments to the fore. As many as 31,000 children have been found to be suffering from malnutrition, the number of dental ailments is comparatively higher at 51,000. Cases of disability and tuberculosis have also been found.

Das explains that while doctors are still examining children anaganwaris across the state, remedial action has already begun. “Children who needed to be referred to tertiary hospitals have been sent there and treatment of those suffering from other ailments is underway at local hospitals. We are hopeful of completing Phase II shortly,” he said. In Phase I of the survey of children in government schools in the 6 to 11 years category, the number of anaemic children was found to be much lower compared to its prevalence in the 0 to 5 years age group. Of 14 lakh students examined, 62,000 children were found to be suffering from anaemia though cases of other ailments was much higher.

The mission is now gearing up for implementation of Phase III of the scheme which will cover children in the 12 - 18 years age group in government as well as private schools. The strategy is likely to be finalised by the end of this month.

Under this programme, the children are screened for medical ailments by schoolteachers, checked by ANMs before being examined by doctors who prescribe treatment and the follow-up action. The aim is to identify ailments afflicting children and treat them at the initial stage.

Karnal, August 9
As many as 37 per cent anganwari children in the age group of 0 to 6 years in Karnal district were found to be anaemic while almost all children had stomach or intestinal worms. This was revealed during a survey conducted by the Health Department.

The survey covered 68,069 children in 1,037 anganwaris in rural and urban areas of the district out of which 25,152 children were found anaemic. District School Health Officer Dr Shashi Prabha said 63 children were suffering from eye disease, 180 were speech or hearing impaired and 84 children were disabled.

The survey reflected poor state of health of infant children, who are prone to diseases due to malnutrition, unhygienic conditions and lack of concern about their health. Dr Prabha said the main reason for worms was malnutrition, walking barefoot and absence of milk in diet. The survey was done under the Integrated Child Development Scheme to judge the health and nutrition status of children and gauge the success of the programme. Immunisation of children, nutritious food to children and health care formed important components of the programme.

The ICDS scheme, launched by the government on October 2, 1975, was adopted simultaneously in the state with specific objective of improving the nutritional and health status of children in the age group of 0-6 years and enhancing the capabilities of mother to look after the normal health and nutritional needs of the child. Under the scheme, being implemented in all community blocks of the state, a package of services, consisting of supplementary nutrition, immunisation, health check-up, referral services, health education and non-formal pre-school education, is provided to children below six years.

Panipat, August 9
National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) has started a nutritional awareness programme in Samalkha, which was inaugurated by Dalip Kumar Gosain, head of the Krishi Vigyan Kendra and Dairy Training Centre of the institute, along with Satish Srinivasan, factory manager of Nestle India Limited, at Government Model Senior Secondary School.

Gosain said the programme had been specially designed to raise the levels of nutritional awareness amongst adolescent students studying in government schools. He said the programme was an outcome of collaboration between the NDRI and Nestle.

He said good nutritional knowledge could help the youth in choosing the right food to build good health. This programme would also help girl students gain nutritional knowledge as they were the future homemakers and play an important role in upbringing of family. Srinivasan said the programme had been designed keeping in mind the girl students in the age group of 13 to 17 years.

The main topics to be covered under the programme included balanced diet, nutritive value of common foods, common local deficiencies and fads and fallacies related to food.

The programme had been developed by nutrition experts of Nestle and the NDRI taking into account the local food habits and related issues. Under the programme, each student underwent 12 hours of training over six sessions of two hours each. Nestle would conduct the same programme in four other leading universities in the country in four different languages, covering over 4,000 students.

To oversee and monitor the progress of the programme a joint committee had been set up, he added.

Chandigarh, August 9
Decks have been cleared for the extension of Delhi Metro to YMCA Chowk, Faridabad, with Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda approving the state government share of Rs 1,588.60 crore for the same at a meeting here today.

The total project cost is estimated at Rs 2,533 crore and the Centre will bear an expenditure of Rs 544.40 crore.

Hooda said the project is stipulated to be started in October and would be completed by March 31, 2013. The 13.875 km-long fully elevated Metro link from the Badarpur line would have nine stations up to the YMCA Chowk in Faridabad.

This would be an extension of the Central Secretariat-Badarpur line of the Delhi Metro. Hooda said the project would ease traffic congestion.

Faridabad, August 9
A 30-year-old woman, who yesterday checked in with a man in the well-known Hotel Raj Hans in Suraj Kund, 12 km from here, was today found murdered in a room of the hotel. The man with whom she had checked in has not been traced yet.

According to the SHO, the woman has been identified as Neetu Rai.

SP Jain, general manager of the hotel, said the two had identified themselves as a couple while booking room No 127 in the hotel. The man had identified himself as Umesh and the room was booked against his name.

The woman was strangulated to death. Her “dupatta” was used for the purpose. The hotel staff had called up the police when they sensed something amiss as the occupants did not respond to several calls made to the room through the service intercom telephone. The body has been sent for an autopsy.

The police, which swung into action after the development, has so far found out that the two were not husband and wife.

According to the police, as also confirmed by the hotel staff, the couple had earlier stayed in the hotel a couple of times in the past few days.

PK Aggarwal, Police Commissioner, Faridabad, who visited the hotel, said the police was working on about three clues, which he declined to throw more light lest it tamper the investigation process.

The woman was staying with her husband in Sector 37 on a rented accommodation and are said to be the natives of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. The husband was out of station, the police said. The police is suspecting estranged relationship between the couple. It has also got some clues from the landlord of the house where they were staying, it said.

The police said the deceased and the man had ordered for snacks at 3 pm yesterday. Thereafter, no room service was called by them. In the morning when the occupants still did not respond to the telephone calls on the intercom, the hotel staff got suspicious and informed the police.

The hotel staff got a telephone urging them to ensure the check out of the people. The police feels that either it could be the person who had checked in with the woman or someone else.

The police also found a mobile phone on the body of the deceased and was trying to collect more details through it. The father of the deceased has also been informed about the development.

Sirsa, August 9
A surge in cases of malaria in flood-affected areas has raised the concerns of villagers. Though the health authorities maintain that the situation is not alarming, statistics speak otherwise.

According to the figures of the Health Department, 70 persons have tested positive for malaria in the past 40 days starting July 1, against 76 cases reported in six months from January 1 to June 30 this year.

Thirteen new cases of malaria have come to light on Monday alone.

“This is only the tip of the iceberg as more cases are going to private doctors, where no blood slides are made,” said a villager in Panihari, alleging that the situation was bad in flood-affected villages.

Villagers complain that no health workers have been approaching them, while mosquitoes are in abundance.

“There has been an unprecedented rise in the number of patients suffering from fever coming to my hospital. Several of them have symptoms of malaria,” said a private doctor from Sirsa town. The health authorities, it is leant, are faced with an acute shortage of staff at a time when they need to launch an offensive against the possible spread of malaria and other vector-borne diseases in the district.

“Against the 152 posts of Multi-purpose Health Worker (Male), we have only 18 persons working, while the rest of the 134 posts are lying vacant,” confided a senior officer of the department requesting anonymity.

Microbiologist Sheel Kaushik, who is officiating as the Deputy Civil Surgeon (Malaria), however, maintained that the “fever mass survey” was not being allowed to suffer due to shortage of staff.

“We are utilising the services of ANMs, Asha workers and health inspectors posted in villages to carry out the survey and have made over 24,000 blood slides in a month,” she added.

She said fever treatment depots (FTDs) had been opened in 128 villages of the district. Spray and fumigation were being done in the villages identified as sensitive and high-risk areas.

The Deputy Civil Surgeon (Malaria) claimed that the situation was under control and the cases of malaria coming to the fore were from scattered areas and not limited to a particular belt.

Admitting a rise in the density of mosquitoes in the recent days, Sheel Kaushik maintained that mere presence of mosquitoes was not enough for the spread of malaria or other vector-borne diseases. “The presence of female anopheles mosquitoes (responsible for malaria) has not been significant and no aedes mosquitoes (causing dengue fever) have been found during the vector surveillance conducted by our teams,” she said.

Hisar, August 9
Dr RS Paroda, chairman of the newly constituted Haryana Farmers Commission, said here recently that his priority as the head of the panel was to devise a strategy to bring down the cost of farming and raise farmers’ income.

Addressing senior scientists of Haryana Agricultural University after assuming charge, he said this was not an easy task and the commission would have to minutely study all aspects of agriculture in the state to pinpoint the reasons for fall in farm income.

Paroda said the commission would also make suitable recommendations to the government on market-driven agricultural diversification, hassle-free standardisation, value addition and agricultural finance.

The panel would suggest ways to improve availability and quality as also scientific use of pesticides, fertilisers and seeds. Besides, it would look for ways to raise crop yield which had a direct impact on farmers’ income.

He said CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda wanted Haryana to top the country in foodgrain production so that farming could once again become a lucrative profession.

Paroda said the location of the commission’s office on the HAU campus would provide varsity scientists an opportunity to have first-hand interaction with farmers. He added that it was necessary to keep the youth attached to agriculture and farm scientists should do their best to train young farmers. Vice-Chancellor KS Khokhar said the commission would serve the purpose of an agricultural think tank which would help make agriculture a lucrative profession.

Commission’s member secretary RS Dalal also spoke.

Sirsa, August 9
For cotton-growing farmers of Haryana, a predator has come as a relief for their crops infested with mealy bugs.

Aenasius bambawale, a carnivorous parasite, is helping farmers save their Bt cotton crop from mealy bugs, without the need for a pesticide.

Cotton crop has been grown on 4.46 lakh hectares in the state this year, with Sirsa and Fatehabad districts being the major producers of the white gold. In Sirsa, the area under cultivation of cotton was 1.60 lakh hectare (4 lakh acres) this year, of which 7,351 acres have been damaged due to floods.

“The mealy bug was noticed in fields almost one-and-a-half months ago in Sirsa, Fatehabad, Hisar, Jind and some other areas, but now the predator aenasius has started taking care of it,” said Ravi Chander Punia, Joint Director (Cotton), Agriculture Department, Haryana.

The bug, according to him, grows on weeds like congress grass and then travels to the cotton crop through water or through human beings and animals. The mealy bug eats into the vitals of the crop by sucking the juice from the stems of cotton plants.

“We are advising farmers to watch their plants carefully and if they find the growth of reddish brown aenasius on the wax-like substance-covered mealy bugs on their plants, they should not spray pesticides on their crops,” Punia added.

He said, “The predator aenasius enters the body of the mealy bug by piercing it and comes out after finishing it.”

Meanwhile, Surender Dalal, Agriculture Development Officer of the department, said, “The female mealy bugs are wingless creatures and hence very soft targets to the carnivorous predators. They lay their eggs in pouches, which collectively fall prey to the younger ones of the aenasious parasites,” said Dalal.

Sirsa, August 9
Every dark cloud has a silver lining. Farmers from Sirsa and Fatehabad, who suffered heavy losses due to the recent floods, have started seeing some benefits in the deluge now.

Geographers and agriculture scientists claim that the floods will provide long-term benefits to the farmers by recharging the underground aquifer and increasing the productivity of the soil.

Over 1.50 lakh hectares in the two districts had been affected by the recent floods and standing crops on nearly 1 lakh acres destroyed.

“Farmers have already started recharging the underground water through their submersible tube wells in the flood-affected areas. This will help them immensely as the water table had declined considerably in the past some years,” said RC Punia, Joint Director (Cotton) in the Haryana Agriculture Department, posted at Sirsa.

He said over 90 per cent farmers having submersible pumps on their land had started recharging the subsoil aquifer by reverse start of their motors.

The water goes down at a great speed through the siphon effect even after the motor is switched off once a link between the floodwater and the aquifer is developed.

He said the floodwater brought with it a number of micronutrients and helped improve the fertility of the soil.

Floods also change the soil structure through the clay that come with the water.

Dr Mahabir Jaglan, chairperson of the Geography Department at Kurukshetra University, maintains that the Ghaggar is the lifeline of paddy-growing areas of Punjab and Haryana.

“Floodwaters coming from the Ghaggar will not only recharge the groundwater aquifer but will also improve fertility of the land by bringing in alluvial soil with it,” he added.

“We have witnessed positive changes in our soil every time floodwaters have stood on the fields for a few days. The fertile sand coming with the floods makes our land more productive for the coming seasons,” said Gurdeep Singh Maan, a progressive farmer from Kirpalpatti village in Sirsa.

He, however, was skeptical to the suggestions that the floodwater would recharge the underground aquifer.

“Water percolates only when the soil is relatively sandy. The paddy fields that have been deluged by the Ghaggar have a hard surface of muddy soil that does not allow water to permeate,” said Mann.

Meanwhile, farmers who witnessed floods last months have started planting paddy again.

Farmers have been bringing saplings from Punjab as these are not available locally now.

In the re-transplantation, mostly the basmati varieties of paddy are being grown in the area, raising hopes of good prospects of the crop this season.

Rewari, August 9
Ajay Singh Chautala, secretary-general of the INLD, has alleged that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which had virtually become the “Congress Bureau of Investigation”, was being blatantly misused by the Congress leadership to harass opposition leaders who were forcefully countering the “misrule’ of the Congress.

Addressing a press conference here yesterday, he said Chief Ministers of various opposition-ruled states as well as former Chief Ministers, who were staunch detractors of the ‘anti-people” policies of the Congress, were in the “stranglehold” of the CBI.

But in sharp contrast, Chief Ministers of various Congress-ruled states were enjoying immunity from the “shackles” of the CBI as if they were the icons of corruption-less regimes, he said.

Jind, August 9
The police has registered a case against four persons, including former MLA Dayanand Sharma, on the orders of the local court in response to a petition filed by a woman.

The complainant, a resident of Rajender Nagar here, had alleged that the accused had cheated her. She was married to Suresh Kumar, an Inspector-level officer of the Haryana Police, on April 4 last on the recommendations of Jagdish Sharma, an ASI with the railway police, who was known to her family.

The woman, a young divorcee, was persuaded by Jagdish Sharma to marry Suresh Kumar, who he said was a widower with two kids and was posted at Panipat.

She told the police that post-marriage, she learnt that her husband had illcit ties. When she protested, she was threatened and later left at her parents’ house in Jind. She was shocked when her husband claimed that he had not married her but had brought her to his house as domestic help.

Rohtak, August 9
A 27-year-old woman from neighbouring Punjab is among three women who have been rescued by the police and an NGO from the clutches of a gang running a prostitution racket here.

The three victims have been lodged in a protection home and are waiting to be reunited with their families. The police has arrested two persons, including a woman, in this connection. This isthe third such incident in the city in the past few months.

The racket was unearthed after the police, helped by an NGO, Bharat Vikas Sangh, found the woman from Punjab at a bus shelter in Ghilaur village on Saturday night.

She had escaped from the clutches of a woman allegedly running a sex racket in Sector 4 and was waiting for a bus to Gohana. The woman, who has a minor son, had come from Bhatinda to Sonepat to attend a court hearing in connection with her divorce case about four days ago. On her way back home, a woman, identified as Babli, met her and offered her all kind of help. The victim missed her train from the Rohtak railway station on and decided to take shelter with Babli as it was getting dark. She told the police she was raped by the woman’s husband and was forcibly taken to a couple of places before she could make her escape.

The police raided the premises of the “kingpin” of the racket here last night. Jaswanti, manager at the shelter home in Srinagar Colony here, said two more girls, one from Kolkata (18) and the other from Lucknow (20), were rescued during the raid.