National Basketball Association seeks to understand working of Nutritional Rehab Centre

MUMBAI: Senior representatives from professional sports association, the National Basketball Association ( NBA) were in Mumbai to understand the way in which the paediatrics department of Sion hospital is implementing the Nutritional Rehabilitation Centre, that takes care of children who suffer from severe acute malunirititon. (SAM).

Children from slums of Dharavi are screened using a specific protocol, and those found to be having symptoms of SAM are admitted to the Nutritional Rehabilitation Centre of Sion hospital.

The NBA team also wanted to see how the nutrition rehabilitation centre is run in the medical college, that provides quality care to slum childen suffering from SAM.

The department of Paediatrics of Sion Medical College, along with the IIT Mumbai and slum community, have set up a production unit which makes medical nutrition therapy, used for treating children suffering from SAM.

The medical nutrition therapy consists of peanuts, milk powder, oil and micro-nutrients, and is developed in an hygienic atmosphere as per international protocols at the production unit in the urban health centre in Dharavi.

The team was eager to visit this unit run by the Sion medical college and understand the working of the Nutritional Rehabilitation Centre supported by the UNICEF that is being run at the urban health centre.

The team spent time understanding the concept of its implementation and understood the challenges and the vision of the medical college, to approach the issue of severe malnutrition in the urban slums of Mumbai.

The dean of Sion Medical College Dr Avinash Supre, professor and head of paedritics Dr Mamta Manglani and professor Dr Alka Jadhav along with the officials of the state government and UNICEF were involved in demostrating how institutes like Sion medical college have been playing an important role in treating the malnourished children.