Centre asks states to fortify food for women and child welfare schemes

HYDERABAD: Even as maternal and child welfare experts have highlighted the importance of convergence of schemes for better results, the Centre has already mooted an elaborate plan to leverage technology in fighting under-nutrition and ensuring that children are healthy.
Throwing light on the Centre’s efforts and future plans for arresting undernutrition, Rakesh Srivastava, secretary, Union ministry of women and child development said, “We have sent an advisory to all state governments to fortify food (salt, oil and wheat flour) in all their schemes and supplementary programmes.”
While this was done in the month of July this year, the Centre is also planning to use technology in a big way to improve targeted interventions.
“Under the ICDS Systems Strengthening and Nutrition Improvement Project (ISSNIP), 56,000 smart phones have been given to Anganwadi workers across 77 districts in the state. The smart phones are used for real-time monitoring of health of newborn and pregnant women,” said the official.
Announcing that the plan will be extended to the entire country in a phased manner, he said 315 districts will be taken up during the current financial year. “In future, the take home rations will be barcoded so they can be traced back to the actual beneficiary to cut down on any malpractices. Also, we will put in place a system for monitoring child health on a monthly basis with an automated alert being sent to the Anganwadi worker if a child loses weight suddenly,” added Srivastava.
“Also the response and progress will be recorded. While 38% of the children have stunted growth, we have set ourselves a target to reduce it to 25% by the year 2022,” he added.