Ha Nam (VNA) – The People’s Committee of the northern province of Ha Nam organised a conference on July 17 to launch a school milk programme for the 2018-2020 period.
The programme, which will be implemented at a cost of 187.3 billion VND, aims to improve the nutrition of kindergarten and primary pupils by giving milk to them daily.
It will help reduce the malnutrition rate, improve the stature and physical strength of children in terms of weight and height, and control overweight and obesity among local kids, contributing to developing future human resources.
The programme sets a target of providing milk for students in all public kindergartens and 76 percent of primary schools by 2020.
All managers, teachers and health workers of the schools will be equipped with knowledge and skills to practice nutritious care, especially school milk, for schoolchildren, while all parents will be guided how to care for their kids’ health at home.
The programme will support all milk costs for pupils who are children of war invalids and martyrs, and come from poor households, while those from near-poor families will get 60 percent support and others 40 percent.
In 2017, Ha Nam piloted the school milk programme in 30 local kindergartens. As a result, all the schools received and gave milk to kids at certain time and their teachers were equipped with knowledge on school nutrition and methods to persuade parents to join the programme.
According to reports, the malnutrition rate among children in Ha Nam province remained high, with the weight-for-age rate of 12.9 percent and the height-for-age rate of 23 percent. The average height of five-year-old children was 103.64 cm.-VNA
VNA