POSHAN Abhiyaan launched on 8th March 2018, aims to reduce malnutrition in the country by adopting a synergised and result oriented approach for improving the nutritional status of children from 0-6 years, adolescent girls, pregnant women and lactating mothers in a time bound manner. The Abhiyaan has mechanisms for timely service delivery and a robust monitoring as well as intervention infrastructure. The major components under this Abhiyaan are ensuring convergence with partnering Ministries/Departments with their key programmes to ensure nutrition outcomes; Information Communication & Technology based Application Software for strengthening service delivery and interventions; Community Mobilization and Awareness Advocacy leading to Jan Andolan for behaviour change and to educate people on nutritional aspects; Capacity Building of Frontline Functionaries and incentivizing States/ UTs for achieving goals.

Mission Poshan 2.0, an integrated nutrition support programme has been announced in budget 2021-2022 for all 36 States/UTs covering all the Districts. It seeks to strengthen nutritional content, delivery, outreach and outcomes with focus on developing practices that nurture health, wellness and immunity to disease and malnutrition. Steps have been taken to improve nutritional quality and testing in accredited labs, strengthen delivery and leverage technology under Poshan Tracker to improve governance. States/UTs have been advised to promote use of AYUSH systems for prevention of malnutrition and related diseases. Guidelines were issued for transparency and accountability in delivery of supplementary nutrition and to track nutritional outcomes on 13.01.2021.

The data on nutritional indicators is captured under the National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) conducted periodically by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. As per the recent report of NFHS-5 (2019-21), the nutrition indicators for children under 5 years have improved as compared with NFHS-4 (2015-16). Stunting, Wasting and Underweight has reduced from 38.4% to 35.5%, 21.0% to 19.3% and 35.8% to 32.1% respectively.

The State/UT wise details of children under 5 years who are stunted, wasted and underweight as per the National Family Health Survey 5 is at Annexure I.

This information was given by the Union Minister of Women and Child Development, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani, in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today.

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Annexure I

State/UT wise prevalence of stunting, wasting and underweight among children under 5 years as per National Family Health Survey 5 (NFHS-5) 2019-21

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BY/AS