Under POSHAN Abhiyaan, September was celebrated as the Rashtriya Poshan Maah across the country to address the malnutrition challenges and sensitize our countrymen regarding the importance of holistic nutrition. Poshan Maah aimed at making people aware of the importance of nutrition & giving individual access to government services to support supplement nutrition for their children & pregnant women /lactating mothers.
Ministry of Women & Child Development as the nodal agency, launched Rashtriya Poshan Maah or National Nutrition Month, across the length and breadth of the country on the 01st of Sep 2018. With wide range of activities focussing on antenatal care, anaemia, growth monitoring, girl’s education, diet, right age of marriage, hygiene and sanitation, eating healthy as themes were organised during the Poshan Maah. Entire range of themes were exhibited and showcased in form of food melas, rallies, school level campaigns, anaemia tests camps, recipe demonstration, radio & TV talk shows, seminars all across country.
As per latest reports, 23 lakhs activities across the country were recorded on Jan Andolan Dashboard wherein approximately 27 crore people were reached through these activities in this nationwide exercise, out of which one third were men. Briefing mediaperson in New Delhi, Secretary, Ministry of Women and Child Development said that Poshan Maah witnessed an unexpected reach and was a successful exercise in Convergence of efforts of various ministries at various levels-National, State and districts- to reach out to the grassroots beneficiaries. The large number of Jan andholan or community based events/activities uploaded on the dashboard is a remarkable example of what convergence efforts could achieve, he said. In order to keep the momentum of the awareness being generated country wide, the Ministry will be awarding Exemplary performers with Poshan Awards on the 10th of this October.
He also added that National Institute on Nutrition will come out with Status of India Nutrition report next year. This report , dealing with various parameters of nutrition will now be compiled annually to give more frequent feedback on status of nutrition in the country. The secretary also disclosed that the ICDS-CAS rollout is also moving at a good pace and more than 4 lakh Anganwadis will be covered by this IT tool by December this year.