A child visits the Lhalu wetland national nature reserve in Lhasa, Southwest China's Tibet autonomous region, July 17, 2021. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Tibet autonomous region has distributed free nutrition packages to its 89,000 children between 6 and 36 months old, a move to improve nutrition in impoverished families, local media reported.

The distribution is part of wider project by the government to improve care for infants and young children in the poorest areas. According to the regional Health Commission, the nutrition project unfolded in some places in 2013, with all 74 counties and districts covered since 2016.

This year, the Health Commission incorporated the nutrition improvement project into the work of poverty relief consolidation and rural revitalization. As of the end of July, more than 89,000 children were provided with the nutrition packages — an effective rate of 74 percent.

Tsering Drolkar, a commission official, said the nutritional content absorbed by infants from food is limited, especially for babies of Tibetan rural residents, whose diet is constrained and one-dimensional.

"Lack of variety in diet may lead to malnutrition, anemia, slow growth and stunted development in children," Tibet Business Daily quoted her as saying.

"At first, the project involved infants between 6 and 24 months, but since 2019 the range had been expanded to children under the age of 36 months and other malnourished children," she said.

"The nutrition packages contain minerals, vitamins and proteins that can supplement a variety of trace elements needed by infants and young children to improve immunity, promote intelligence and foster growth and development."