Mamta Taruni Abhiyan

What is Mamta Taruni Abhiyan?

Mamta Taruni Abhiyan is an adolescent health outreach programme of the Health and Family Welfare Department, Government of Gujarat. It was rolled out to give adequate healthcare and timely counselling to adolescent girls aged 10 to 19 years, with a deliberate focus on girls who are not in school.

That focus is the point of the programme. Gujarat already reaches school-going adolescents through the School Health Programme and through weekly supervised iron-folic acid supplementation for students in classes 8 to 12. Girls who have dropped out fall outside all of those channels, and Mamta Taruni Abhiyan was designed to close that gap by moving the services to the village anganwadi centre and the health sub-centre instead of the classroom.

Mamta Taruni Abhiyan is not a cash scheme. There is no bank transfer, no application form and no sanction letter. What the programme provides is a recurring, free package of clinical and counselling services delivered close to home.

What does a Mamta Taruni Divas provide?

The programme runs through a monthly Mamta Taruni Divas, a health day organised in every village by health workers. At the session an adolescent girl receives:

• Growth monitoring, height and weight recorded and Body Mass Index calculated and tracked over time, with weighing repeated at set intervals.
• Haemoglobin testing at periodic intervals, to detect anaemia.
• Iron and folic acid (IFA) tablets, with additional nutrition supplements provided for girls found to have a low BMI.
• Tetanus toxoid vaccination, given at age 10 and again at age 16.
• Counselling on the physical and psychological changes of adolescence, menstrual hygiene and menstrual disorders.
• Reproductive health information, including screening and referral for reproductive and sexually transmitted infections, and awareness of contraception for married adolescents.

The stated public health objectives are to reduce anaemia among adolescent girls, cut the number of teenage pregnancies, address unmet contraceptive need among married adolescents, reduce maternal deaths among teenage mothers, and lower the incidence of reproductive tract and sexually transmitted infections in this age group.

Who is eligible for Mamta Taruni Abhiyan?

Girls who can take part:

• Adolescent girls aged 10 to 19 years resident in Gujarat.
• Out-of-school girls, who are the programme's primary target group.
• Married adolescent girls, who are referred to the monthly Mamta Taruni Divas by health workers.
• Girls of any caste, religion or family income. No income certificate, caste certificate or ration card is required.

Who cannot apply or is not covered:

• Boys, who are covered by other adolescent health services rather than by this programme.
• Women aged 20 and above, who fall outside the 10-to-19 age band and are served by the general maternal and reproductive health programmes.
• Anyone expecting a cash benefit. Mamta Taruni Abhiyan pays no money, so an application for financial assistance under this name cannot succeed.
• Residents of other states, since the programme is delivered through Gujarat's own village health infrastructure.

How to access Mamta Taruni Abhiyan services

1. Find out the Mamta Taruni Divas date for your village. Ask the anganwadi worker, ASHA worker or ANM at the sub-centre, the day is fixed monthly and in many villages is held on a set weekday.
2. Attend the session at the anganwadi centre or health sub-centre. No form, fee or referral letter is needed, and the girl can come with a parent or on her own.
3. Get registered. The health worker records the girl's name, age and marital status in the register and opens a health record card for her.
4. Complete the check-up — height, weight, BMI and, at the scheduled interval, haemoglobin.
5. Collect the IFA tablets and any nutrition supplement advised, and take the tetanus vaccination if you are 10 or 16 years old.
6. Return every month. The benefit of the programme comes from repeat contact: anaemia is corrected by continued IFA intake, not by a single tablet.

Where the programme sits among Gujarat's adolescent health services

Mamta Taruni Abhiyan is one of several Gujarat programmes aimed at the 10-to-19 age group. A published case study of adolescent health programmes in the state records six running concurrently: Mamta Taruni Abhiyan, adolescent-friendly health service clinics, the menstrual hygiene programme, SABLA, the Weekly Iron and Folic Acid Supplementation (WIFS) programme, and the School Health Programme.

The anaemia work these programmes build on began in June 2000, when an Adolescent Anaemia Control Programme was piloted in Vadodara district, giving supervised weekly IFA tablets on a fixed day to adolescent girls in Grades 8 to 12. Evaluations of the Gujarat adolescent programmes have reported substantial gains in awareness, including anaemia awareness rising from 73 per cent to close to 100 per cent among participants over an 18-month period.

Because several programmes overlap, a girl may be enrolled in more than one, for example receiving weekly IFA at school under WIFS while also attending a Mamta Taruni Divas. There is no bar on this, and no benefit is withdrawn because of it.

Where to ask questions or complain

• Anganwadi worker, ASHA worker or ANM of your village. The first point of contact for the date, place and content of the Mamta Taruni Divas.
• Primary Health Centre (PHC) medical officer of your area, if sessions are not being held or supplies of IFA tablets are unavailable.
• Chief District Health Officer of your district, for persistent gaps in service delivery.
• Health and Family Welfare Department, Government of Gujarat, at gujhealth.gujarat.gov.in, for programme information.

All services under Mamta Taruni Abhiyan are provided free of cost. No girl or family should be asked to pay for a check-up, an IFA tablet or a vaccination at a Mamta Taruni Divas.

A note on published information

Mamta Taruni Abhiyan is an operational field programme rather than an application-based benefit scheme, and Gujarat's health department does not maintain a dedicated public scheme page with a benefit table for it. The service package, age band and monthly-health-day structure set out above are drawn from state press reporting at the time of rollout, published field studies of the programme, and the peer-reviewed literature on Gujarat's adolescent anaemia control work. Figures such as a per-girl budget or a current beneficiary count are not published on an official Gujarat source and have therefore been left out rather than estimated.