Agency
New Delhi: The government has approved the launch of the National Nutrition Mission (NNM) which will be driven by technology to monitor the growth of children as well as check the pilferage of food ration provided at anganwadis.
The mission will kick off in 315 high burden districts during 2017-2018 and will be implemented over three years.
Nearly 235 districts will be covered in 2018-19 and the remaining will be covered by 2019-20.
By 2020, an estimated 10 crore people will benefit through this programme for which the Cabinet has approved a budget of Rs 9046.17 crore.
The International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) or another multilateral development bank will contribute 50 per cent of the total budgetary allocation. The rest will be shared between the states and the Centre in 60:40 ratio.
The total contribution of the Centre will be Rs 2,849.54 crore and nearly Rs 1,700 crore will be contributed by the state governments.
The mission has a target to reduce under-nutrition and low birth weight by 2 per cent each per annum. It also aims to bring down anemia among young children, women and adolescent girls by 3 per cent per year until 2020.
The government will also strive to reduce the prevalence of stunting from the current level of 38.4 per cent (as per the National Family Health Survey 4) to 25 per cent by 2022.
At the heart of the mission is the use of information communication technology for real-time monitoring of the services delivered by anganwadi workers, frontline community health workers or ASHAs (Accredited social health activists) and auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs).
The use of smartphones by anganwadi workers and tablets by their supervisors will also help in mapping nutrition or growth levels of the beneficiaries.
Women and Child Development (WCD) Ministry Secretary RK Shrivastava highlighted that use of technology will help frontline workers in carrying out their daily responsibilities.
“Eleven registers maintained by Anganwadi workers weigh nearly 8.5 kgs. These will be replaced by smartphones which will weigh 170 gms,” he said at a media briefing today.
He added that a pilot has been carried out across 50,000 anganwadis in 162 districts for 42 lakh beneficiaries where the workers used mobile phones to record attendance, weight and height of children who come to the centres as well as click photos of the hot-cooked meals served there.
The growth chart plotted by the software provides daily progress of the child and when the graph indicates adverse results an SMS alert is sent to the parents.
