Question : National Survey on Child Nutrition

(a) whether the Government has taken steps to ensure child nutrition during the pandemic and if so, the details thereof;

(b) whether the Government intends to conduct a national survey on child nutrition and improvements in malnutrition and if so, the details thereof;

(c) whether the Government has any data on rural and urban consumption expenditure between 2019 and 2021 and if so, the details thereof;

(d) whether the Government has taken steps to resume ICDS in states, where these schemes were halted during the pandemic, if so, the details thereof;

(e) whether the Government has taken steps to tackle aggravated cases of stunting and wasting among children during the pandemic; and

(f) if so, the details thereof and if not, reasons therefor?

(a) to (d) Government has been receiving regular reports from the States on the prevailing scenario and activities undertaken during Covid-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, all Anganwadi Centres across the country were closed to limit the impact of the pandemic. However, to ensure continuous nutritional support to the beneficiaries, the Anganwadi Workers and Helpers distributed Supplementary Nutrition at the doorsteps of beneficiaries once in 15 days. In addition, they also assisted the local administration in community surveillance, creating awareness as well as other work assigned to them from time to time.

The data on nutritional indicators is captured under the National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) conducted periodically by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. In NFHS-5 survey conducted in 2019-21 nutrition indicators for children under 5 years have shown improvement. Stunting has reduced from 38.4% to 35.5%, Wasting has reduced from 21.0% to 19.3% and Underweight prevalence has reduced from 35.8% to 32.1% as compared with NFHS-4 conducted in 2015-16

(e) & (f) As per information received from States/UTs, Anganwadi services have been opened in most States/UTs. Government has taken measures to strengthen nutritional content, delivery, outreach and outcomes with focus on developing practices that nurture health, wellness and immunity to disease and malnutrition. Steps have also been taken to improve nutritional quality and testing, strengthen delivery and leverage technology under Poshan Tracker to improve governance. Government has advised States/UTs to ensure that the quality of supplementary nutrition conforms to prescribed standards laid down under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 and regulations made there under. States/UTs have also been advised to promote use of AYUSH systems for prevention of malnutrition and related diseases. A program to support development of Poshan Vatikas at Anganwadi Centers to meet dietary diversity gap leveraging traditional knowledge in nutritional practices has also been taken up. Guidelines were issued for transparency and accountability in delivery of supplementary nutrition and to track nutritional outcomes on 13.01.2021.

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