POSHAN Abhiyaan takes forward role in curbing malnutrition in the state

Jasmine Deb Jamatia

The Government of India has launched a flagship programme POSHAN (PM’s Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nourishment) Abhiyaan in 2018 for the welfare of children, pregnant women and lactating mothers. Prior to this. it was ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) that was being implemented all over the country including Tripura to curb malnutrition among children. Poshan Abhiyan was a three-year programme to ensure malnutrition-free India by 2022. It would not be wrong to say that malnutrition has dropped greatly but India being a highly populated country, the chance of malnutrition prevails especially in far-flung areas, which is why Mission POSHAN 2.0 launched in 2021 is actively being implemented across the country.

To intensify the POSHAN programme, an App was launched known as ‘POSHAN Tracker’ App through which the Anganwadi workers enter updates and details of beneficiaries without having to write on register books. This has proved to be useful especially during pandemic situation. The App provides real-time monitoring and makes it casier to track all AWCs, AWWs and beneficiaries.

There are over 10,000 AWCs across the state. The Angangwadi workers play a huge role in overall implementation of the programme providing multiple services starting from providing supplementary nutrition, pre-school education, growth monitoring, home visits, generating awareness on early breastfeeding, birth spacing, birth preparedness and going for institutional childbirth instead of home birth, referral services in case of any child being sick, Take Home Ration (THR) to lactating mothers, pregnant women and children of 6 months to 3 years of age, Hot Cooked Meal (HCM) to children of 3-6 years and vaccination to infants and pregnant women.

In case a child is underweight, double ration is provided. Children with Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) will be provided 6 eggs for 6 days, 20 gm Jaggery and 200 ml Milk per day for 6 days.

The AWC workers provide supplementary nutrition, pre-school education at their respective centres from 7 am till 11 am. After that, they go out for home visits. Every AWC worker is provided with a smart phone to store all data over POSHAN tracker App which helps in real-time tracking of progress of programme.