Integrated Child Development Services in Rural India Our most recent Public Health field visit was to a rural Anganwadi Center, which provides the community with services in supplementary nutrition, immunization, regular health check-ups, nutrition counseling/health education for women, and medical referalls. They also run a non-formal pre-school for local children between 3 - 6 years old, which allows them to better monitor the children's health. Every two weeks they record all of the heights and weights to make sure to catch any abnormalities as soon as possible. This is especially important in the rural areas where a large amount of the children are malnourished. We spent the morning observing the classroom environment (or in my case, trying to decide which adorable Indian baby to kidnap...) and learning about the different methods that are characteristic of non-formal education programs. |
| Before leaving we were able to watch a couple of the routine check-ups in progress, which included some pretty creative methods for measuring the children. This clip shows their rather odd weight measuring process... |