Trip to badlapur

      We had visited Badlapur on 31st August 2013. I had boarded the 8:40 AM train from Byculla as all of us had planned to eventually board that train as and when it came to the railway station nearest to our house. It was scheduled to reach Badlapur at 9:55 AM. I was made the treasurer of the batch.
      I had travelled by rickshaw with most other friends.... we had told him Aanganwaadi but he took us to Aaganwaadi, which was like far ahead from our actual destination! In Aaganwaadi, we were left at a school for young children. We visited the school and greeted the teacher and children.
     After a while, we realised that we were supposed to reach Aanganwaadi! We thought we would walk it up. On the way, we got into a truck as a free lift and reached our destination! I will never forget the awesome experience we had in that truck ride!
     We then met the rest of our friends at the Aanganwaadi Centre
     Theoretically, there is one Aanganwaadi worker for a population of 400 to 600 under the ICDS (INTEGRATED CHILD DEVELOPMENT SCHEME) The PHC we visited offered outreach services such as immunization, basic curative care services, and maternal and child health services. There was an elderly lady present, who was explaining to us in detail the way in which the PHC would take care of the children under it's reach.
      We were shown a vaccination record book where the names of the children under the care of that Aanganwaadi Centre were written in one column and the vaccines they had gotten in the subsequent columns. Every Child was made to take the appropriate vaccine at the appropriate time after birth. This was as per the national immunisation schedule. It thus included vaccines such as BCG, DPT, OPV, HBV, Measles, tetanus toxoid and Vitamin A.
      Malnutrition kills around 4 million children every year - 1 child every 8 seconds. Aanganwaadi workers try to solve this problem too. They weigh every child at regular intervals under their surveillance and plot their weight and age on a growth monitoring chart. The chart was conveniently divided into 3 regions - topmost was a Green area then Below it was a yellow one and even below that was a red area. The Green area signified that the child was receiving a good amount of nutrition, while the yellow area indicated moderate acute malnutrition and the red area indicated severe acute malnutrition. Which area the child fell in depended on his age-weight plotted in the graph... this made it easy to understand for the villagers. There was one more condition-the graph should go on ascending and not stay horizontal or descend - as both indicate malnutrition. Most of the graphs we had seen were horizontal or ascending slightly. There was a whole book filled with such graph pages.
     The lady also told us about a child with severe acute malnutrition who was brought there and how she went about saving the child. He was one of the children we had seen that day. We then heard each child sing, gave them sweets, thanked the people there and left.
     We also visited a centre for the mentally retarded. There were people of all ages. When people would eat together, there would be a few others who would really trouble others and so they were locked inside rooms all alone with a grill to see others. We also gave the people in charge food packets to distribute among the inmates.
    That way our trip ended. We really enjoyed and I shall always remember every moment of that trip!