POSHAN Abhiyaan was launched on 8th March 2018 with an aim to achieve improvement in nutritional status of Adolescent Girls, Pregnant Women and Lactating Mothers in a time bound manner by adopting a synergised and result oriented approach. The Abhiyaan has been rolled out in all the States/UTs including the constituencies of Bhuj, Abdasa, Gandhidham, Rapar, Mandvi, Anjar of the Kutch District.
The efforts under the Supplementary Nutrition Programme under Anganwadi Services and POSHAN Abhiyaan have been rejuvenated and converged as ‘SakshamAnganwadi and POSHAN 2.0’ (Mission Poshan 2.0). It seeks to address the challenges of malnutrition in children, adolescent girls, pregnant women and lactating mothers through a strategic shift in nutrition content and delivery and by creation of a convergent eco-system to develop and promote practices that nurture health, wellness and immunity.
Mission Poshan 2.0 focuses on Maternal Nutrition, Infant and Young Child Feeding Norms, Treatment of MAM/SAM and Wellness through AYUSH. It rests on the pillars of Convergence, Governance, and Capacity-building. POSHAN Abhiyaan is the key pillar for Outreach and will cover innovations related to nutritional support, ICT interventions, Media Advocacy and Research, Community Outreach and Jan Andolan. Steps have been taken to improve nutritional quality and testing in accredited labs, strengthen delivery and leverage technology under the ‘Poshan Tracker’, a robust ICT enabled platform to improve governance with regard to real time monitoring of provisioning of supplementary nutrition for prompt supervision and management of services.
Under Mission Poshan 2.0, focus is on diet diversity, food fortification, leveraging traditional systems of knowledge and popularizing use of millets. Nutrition awareness strategies under Mission Poshan 2.0 aim to develop sustainable health and well-being through regional meal plans to bridge dietary gaps. Further, greater emphasis is being given on the use of millets for preparation of Hot Cooked Meal and Take Home rations (not raw ration) at Anganwadi centres for Pregnant Women, Lactating Mothers and Children below 6 years of age, as millets have high nutrient content which includes protein, essential fatty acid, dietary fibre, B-Vitamins, minerals such as calcium, iron, zinc, folic acid and other micro-nutrients thus helping to tackle anemia and other micro-nutrient deficiencies common among women and children.
Further, the initiatives taken by the Government of Gujarat throughout the State, including Kutch District, are as under:
- Regular Growth Monitoring of children under 5 years of age is carried out.
- Training of State, District and Block Resource Groups at sector level on Interactive Learning Modules in 7 districts
- A total of 11029 PoshanVatikas were developed at Anganwadi Centres across the State, where in 1806 PoshanVatikas have been developed in convergence with MNREGA. A total of 1028 PoshanVatikas have been established at 2116 AWCs in Kutch.
- During April-May 2022, October-November 2022 and February 2023 Master Trainer Training of the POSHAN Tracker Application was conducted.
- Aadhaar verification of the beneficiaries is done in the POSHAN Tracker application to and so far 97% of the beneficiaries have been Aadhaar verified.
- Anganwadi workers are also trained on the POSHAN tracker application and thematic sessions on Poshan tracker module have been delivered from time to time
- Every year September is celebrated as Nutrition Month (PoshanMaah) by the Government of India and special importance is given to various activities related to nutrition and health. A total of 14,02,216 activities were conducted in total in all the constituency of Kutch in September 2022.
- Community Based Events are celebrated at every Anganwadi centre across the State on the first and third Tuesday of the month. During the year 2022-23, 95% AWCs conducted the two thematic Community-Based Events (CBE). SuposhanSamvad is celebrated on the first Tuesday of every month and Annaprashan is celebrated on the third Tuesday of every month.
- State Level Sanctioning Committee (SLSC) constituted under the Chairmanship of Chief Secretary holds review meetings to monitor the progress of activities done under PoshanAbhiyan.
- District Level Monitoring Review Committee has been constituted at the district level and one meeting per quarter is held in all the districts under the chairmanship of Collector/District Magistrate.
In order to assess the outcome of various interventions of the Government to address the issue of malnutrition, data on nutritional indicators is captured regularly under the National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) conducted by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. As per the last two rounds of NFHS, the prevalence of undernutrition has decreased in the Kutch district of Gujarat. The prevalence of stunting, wasting and underweight has reduced from 40.8%, 31.4% and 39% in NFHS-4 (2015-16) to 37.5%, 20.2%, and 33.4% as per NFHS-5 (2019-21). This information was given by the MINISTER OF WOMEN AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT, SMT. SMRITI ZUBIN IRANI in a written reply in Lok Sabha today.
