Worm treatment, vitamin for IDP children

Nadira Gunatilleke

The Healthcare and Nutrition Ministry yesterday commenced a special program to provide vaccinations, worm treatment and vitamin B to all 40,000 IDP children under the age of 5.

The program will be completed within three days, a Healthcare and Nutrition Ministry spokesman said. The program was launched after finding out the statistics through a special survey conducted by the Ministry.

According to the statistics of this survey, there are 40,000 children under the age five in all welfare villages without proper healthcare. The vaccination and nutrition program is carried out with the assistance of 140 family health workers, 1200 Sarvodaya volunteers and several other health workers.

WHO, UNICEF and Sarvodaya will assist the Ministry to implement this program. The program covered over 10,000 children yesterday and the rest will be covered today and tomorrow.

At the moment there are about 2500 pregnant mothers in the welfare villages and the Cheddikulam hospital provides them all required health facilities.

Between 15 and 25 child births take place at this hospital per day.

There are about 70 mothers in the pre-natal wards and around 300 mothers are now in post natal wards.

These wards provide protection for them from excessive heat. The Ministry yesterday opened a new operation theatre at the Cheddikulam hospital built at a cost of Rs.35 million.