Question : National Nutrition Mission

(a) whether the Government is promoting the activities of the National Nutrition Mission (NNM) in a big way to tackle malnourishment among children and utilising the resources to ensure their health care and access to nutrition services in the country, if so, the details thereof and if not, the reasons therefor;

(b) whether the Government authorities and the public at large should work together for children’s nutrition through various activities, while an optimum utilization of resources should be ensured to strengthen the institutions rendering child-centric services, to tackle the 40 per cent of children who are below five years in age were malnourished in the country, if so, the details thereof and the steps being taken in this direction and results yielded therefrom so far; and

(c) the steps being taken by the Government to strengthen Anganwadi centres in each district in the country by a private trust as part of the NNM activity for improving their services and steps being taken for capacity building of Anganwadi workers and accredited social health activists particularly in rural areas of the country as a pilot project?

ANSWER

MINISTER OF WOMEN AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT
( SRIMATI SMRITI ZUBIN IRANI )

(a) Government is implementing the POSHAN Abhiyaan since 18th December, 2017 to address the problem of malnutrition in the country. The salient features of the Abhiyaan inter-alia includes ensuring convergence with various programmes; incentivizing States/ Union Territories for achieving targeted goals; Information and Communication Technology enabled Integrated Child Development Services-Common Application Software; Evaluation by NITI Aayog; Setting up of National Nutrition Resource Centre (NNRC) at National level and State Nutrition Resource Centre (SNRC) in each State/Union Territory; Community Mobilization & Behaviour Change & Communication, Awareness Advocacy and Information Education Communication; Jan Andolan by educating people on nutritional aspects; Innovation; Strengthening human resource; measuring height and weight of children below 6 years of age for early detection of stunting and wasting; strengthening of Training & Capacity Building etc.

(b) POSHAN Abhiyaan focuses on converting the agenda of improving nutrition into a Jan Andolan through wide public participation. In order to strengthen processes for community engagement, information dissemination and empowerment of beneficiaries, the POSHAN Abhiyaan provides for the organization of Community Based Events (CBEs) twice in a month on a fixed day of week at each Anganwadi Centre. Under Community Based Events, activities like Annaprasan Diwas, Suposan Diwas (specifically focused on orienting husbands), Celebrating coming of age- getting ready for pre-school at AWC, dissemination of messages related to public health for improvement of nutrition and to reduce illness are undertaken. Government has celebrated the month of September, 2019 as Rashtriya Poshan Maah across the country. The main focus during the month was on five sutras i.e. First 1,000 days of a Child, Diarrhoea Prevention, Paushtik Aahaar, WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene), and Anaemia Prevention. During the month, more than 3.66 crore activities were organized which inter-alia included home visits, community based events, Village Health Sanitation and Nutrition Days, Poshan Melas, Poshan Rallies, school based activities, anaemia test-treat-talk camps, Panchayat meetings, local leader meetings.

The results of the POSHAN Abhiyaan can be known after the programme has completed its approved period. However, in the meantime, as per the report of Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS) conducted by UNICEF, prevalence of stunting, wasting and underweight among children is 34.7%, 17% and 33.4% respectively, which is an improvement and reduction from the levels reported in National Family Health Survey-4.

(c) Ministry of Women and Child Development has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Tata Trusts for providing the Swasth Bharat Preraks (SBPs) at District and State level. Their mandate is to support in design, planning, implementation, and monitoring of effective and successful implementation of the Abhiyaan. So far,346 SBPs have been provided by the Tata Trusts which have been deployed in 337 districts of 32 States/UTs.

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