POSHAN Abhiyaan (National Nutrition Mission - NNM) set up by Government on November, 2017 aims to reduce the level of stunting, under-nutrition, anemia and low birth weight babies. The important components of the Abhiyaan are: ensuring convergence with various programmes; incentivizing States/ UTs for achieving goals; IT enabled Real Time Monitoring (ICT-RTM); Evaluation; weighing efficiency and making nutrition visible; Community mobilization awareness advocacy; IEC, Jan Andolan - to educate the people on nutritional aspects, on-line Course on Nutrition for Children, Nutrition message from folk songs and songs on WASH, sending messages on nutrition and also creating ring-tones, Yoga for children at AWCs; strengthening human resource; measuring height and length of children below 6 years of age. Coverage of districts in a phased manner is 315 districts in 2017-18, 235 districts in 2018-19 and remaining districts in 2019-20.
The total budget for the POSHAN Abhiyaan is Rs.9046.17 crore with GoI share of Rs.2849.54 crore. Under POSHAN Abhiyaan, the Government has fixed targets to reduce stunting, under-nutrition, anemia (among young children, women and adolescent girls) and reduce low birth weight by 2%, 2%, 3% and 2% per annum respectively. Mission also strives to achieve reduction in Stunting from 38.4% (NFHS-4) to 25% by 2022 (Mission 25 by 2022).
A single unified technical set-up, namely a National Nutrition Resource Centre – Central Project Management Unit (NNRC-CPMU) at the national level and similarly State Nutrition Resource Centre – State Project Management Unit (SNRC-SPMU) in all States/ UTs ensures regular monitoring and review of all sectoral programmes especially those directly affecting malnutrition and.
A day long National Seminar TECH-THON- Technology Partnerships for POSHAN Abhiyaan was organised on 28th June 2018. It was aimed at showcasing & orienting the environment towards the initiative, exchange ideas, ideate and exploring avenues of cooperation and partnerships for technology support as well as, reaching-out to the beneficiaries for effective behavioural change to initiate a ‘Peoples Movement’ or Jan Andolan towards Nutrition.
Monitoring is done under POSHAN Abhiyaan through ICDS-CAS aimed to augment system strengthening including improving the coverage and quality of nutrition services. The ICDS-CAS has two components, namely the mobile application which is made available to the field functionaries pre-loaded on mobile phones and a six tier monitoring dashboard for desktops. The software allows the capture of data from the field on electronic devices (mobile/tablet). It enables collection of information on ICDS service delivery and its impact on nutrition outcomes in beneficiaries on a regular basis. The ICDS-CAS dashboard facilitates Nutrition outcome oriented monitoring triggered by mapping of weighment efficiency, height and nutrition status of children under-five years. The service delivery to children, pregnant women and lactating mothers can be monitored through the software application dashboard.
Capacity enhancement of frontline functionaries is being done through Incremental Learning Approach (ILA). Joint planning, implementation, and review of performance with health functionaries and continued knowledge and learning exchange through workshops and exposure visits to best practices are a part of this approach. A total of 21 ILA modules have been developed and disseminated to all States/ UTs and are also available on Ministry’s website wcd.nic.in. The above Information was given by Minister of Women and Child Development, Stm Maneka Sanjay Gandhi in reply to a question in the Lok Sabha.