Define Nutrition Education for prevention of vitamin a deficiency?
Ignorance, you may recall studying earlier, is an important determinant of vitamin A deficiency. There is, therefore, a need to increase the awareness of the community about the significance of proper diet in the prevention of vitamin A deficiency. Although education is a component of all health and nutrition programmes, this has been one of the weakest links. The health functionaries are either not properly oriented or do not have the necessary audio-visual tools to impart nutrition education. Multi-media approach involving communication experts will have to be adopted for success of nutrition education efforts. Food and Nutrition Board, through its network of 67 centres has been impasting education and training in nutrition, as well as, on home-scale preservation of fruits and vegetables. However, efforts made, so far, have not been adequate. Education programmes adopting social marketing (by applying marketing principles to education campaigns) approach have been shown to be effective in changing the behaviour of community.