Protecting children's health through school lunch program in Sri Lanka


"In Sri Lanka, parents want to send their children to kindergarten at a very young age. When I started to work for this program, I understood that this was because of school lunch."says Imamura Naomi, nurse from the Kumamoto Red Cross hospital, who has been working as health staff in Sri Lanka, until last April. She was in charge of the Community-Based Health (CBH) project in Puttalam District, which is providing assistance in its 15 village areas, supplying drinking water, building lavatories, delivering hygiene education, improving nutrition of children, and supporting healthy living standards for its inhabitants.




This is a 3 year program started in October 2005. In the first year, the Sri Lankan Red Cross staff and volunteers visited each village and conducted a broad investigation in order to identify health problems that faced many people. The results revealed that malnutrition of children of less than 5 years of age was one of the biggest problems. From the 2nd year, the project launched activities to solve this issue which comprise: school lunch service in 8 kindergartens, in order to improve nutrition of the children, nutritional education for parents and teachers and promotion of "kitchen garden." Their activities were welcomed by parents. "When we know that kindergarten is serving nutritious meals, we can send our children without feeling worried, and children are happy to go to there." Although Muslim children cannot take school lunches for religious reasons, many parents request to receive the school lunch menu to try it at home.


After working for 1 year and half, Imamura says "we have just finished the groundwork for the improvement of local health and hygiene conditions." Now, the program is handed over to her successor from the Kumamoto Red Cross hospital, Otsuka Mari, and continues until September 2009.