HEALTHCARE

Govt launches NNM to monitor nutritional status of children

The government wants to get smart with monitoring the nutritional status of children in India. In a multi ministry effort, of which the Women and Child Development Ministry is the nodal body, the government is launching the National Nutrition Mission, the thrust of which will be the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for real time monitoring of children covered under the scheme, with incentives to workers to improve results. 

anganwadi-afp Representative image | AFP

The Union government has allocated Rs 9,046.17 crore for three years for the NNM. It aims to reduce low birth weight by 2 per cent, as well as stunting, anaemia and undernutrition by a similar percentage. The mission will strive to achieve reducing in stunting from a national 38.4 per cent to 25 per cent by 2022. 

Speaking to press persons, WCD minister Maneka Gandhi elaborated that though India has had programmes for food security and nutrition, monitoring these schemes have always been a problem. Under the NNM, aroud 300 “heavy burden districts” across the country are being covered. All anganwadi workers will be equipped with smart phones with pre-loaded NNM apps, while supervisors will be provided with tabs. 

“The data of every child under that particular anganwadi will be fed into the app, and regular height wand weight recordings will be entered,'' said WCD secretary Rakesh Srivastava. “This will allow all authorities concerned to be able to access data. The moment a child's health status dips below the red mark, alerts can be sent to parents and the anganwadi staff.''

The government has already done a pilot run in160 anganwadis and found very encouraging results. The workers took to digital technology easily and said it not just made the work easier but also lightened the physical burden of carrying 11 registers per anganwadi, the government said. 

Srivastava said that the aim is to link each beneficiary through Aadhaar. “We have had around 50 

per cent Aadhaar feeding so far, we hope to make it 80 per cent by the year end. Those without Aadhaar will not be denied the benefits of nutrition, but we will incentivise aanganwadi workers with awards to ensure that all children in their register get linked through Aadhar, either with the own identities or through their mothers.”

NNM is not a scheme to give additional nutrition. There are already several nutrition programmes covering pregnant women, lactating mothers and young children. These include the Janani suraksha scheme, the mid day meal scheme and anganwadi distributed nutrition. NNM is an effort at bringing in synergy among the various schemes, which are run by different ministries. It also envisages to eliminate the ghost beneficiaries. 

“A pilot survey in Assam revealed that in a particular area, three lakh children, who were registered under various nutirtional schemes, didn't even exist. Once we have smart monitoring of the delivery mechanism, the fake beneficiaries will be eliminated,'' Gandhi said. 

NNM is a joint effort between WCD, Niti Aayog, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Ministry of Sanitation and Drinking Water.

"Until now, the two ministries had been working in silos. Now, there will be convergence in monitoring and tracking nutrition status of the children," said Jagat Prakash Nadda, Union minister for health and family welfare. The convergence will help the two ministries in getting real time data for nutritional status of children, he said. Healthcare workers such as ASHAs, ANMs and anganwadi workers would be given incentives to promote the nutrition initiatives, said Nadda.

A joint effort by the ministries assumes significance in the backdrop of India's nutritional challenges— according to the Global Hunger Index (GHI), more than one-fifth (21 per cent) of children under five weigh too little for their height (wasting), and over one-third are too short for their age (stunting).

Only three other countries in this year’s GHI—Djibouti, Sri Lanka, and South Sudan—show child wasting above 20 per cent. Experts say while the rate of stunting has improved—down 29 per cent since 2000—the wasting rate has not displayed any substantial improvement in the past 25 years.

According to the National Institute of Nutrition in Hyderabad, the prevalence of stunting among urban children under five was highest in the states of Uttar Pradesh (40.8 per cent), Maharashtra (36.4 per cent), Delhi (35.7 per cent) and West Bengal (34.4 per cent).

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