POSHAN Abhiyaan was launched on 8th March, 2018, with an objective to reduce malnutrition from the country in a phased manner and achieve improvement in nutritional status of Children from 0-6 years, Adolescent Girls, Pregnant Women and Lactating Mothers in a time bound manner.
Focusing on the aims of POSHAN Abhiyaan, Mission Poshan 2.0 (Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0) announced in budget 2021-2022 across States/UTs, is an integrated nutrition support programme, to strengthen nutritional content, delivery, outreach and outcomes with focus on developing practices that nurture health, wellness and immunity to disease and malnutrition.
The data on nutrition indicators that is stunting, wasting and underweight among children under 5 years as captured by National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4 and NFHS-5), and Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS) is annexed as Annexure I. The recently released report of NFHS-5 is available only for 22 States/UTs.
During the pandemic, as per the MHA guidelines, all Anganwadi Centres across the country were closed to limit the impact of COVID-19. However, to ensure continuous nutritional support to Anganwadi beneficiaries, Anganwadi Workers and Helpers distributed Supplementary Nutrition at the doorsteps of beneficiaries once in 15 days and have distributed medicines as per requirement.
This information was given by the Union Minister for Women and Child Development, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani, in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.