Initiative to provide better nutrition to over 100 mn girls launched

With an aim to provide better nutrition to over 100 million girls worldwide, Micronutrient Initiative(MI), an International NGO, launched a five-year-long global initiative here on Wednesday.

Among other countries, India too will benefit from the global initiative.

According to the organisation, by 2020, around 10.6 million women, girls and children will be benefitted from this initiative in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, Chhattisgarh.

The Right Start initiative in India will entail training of health workers, counselling of pregnant women and mothers on proper feeding practices for children, promotion of early initiation of breast feeding.

It will also include counselling of new born care at the birthing facility, including delayed cord clamping for increased blood flow to the infant and Iron and Folic Acid (IFA) supplements to adolescent girls.

"We are in 2016 and yet one billion women and girls around the world are malnourished. Canada recognises the importance of investing in initiatives like Right Start to change the status quo for women and girls around the world," said Marie-Claude Bibeau, Canada's Minister for International Development and La Francophonie.

The initiative has been launched by MI in collaboration with the Canada government.

Among the other dignitaries present during the occasion were Joyce Banda, former president of Malawi, and Phyllis Costanza, CEO of the UBS Optimus Foundation.

Malnutrition remains one of the most persistent barriers to human development and it limits the capacity of generation after generation of women and girls to grow, learn, earn and lead.

One billion women and girls are malnourished - and the cost of that lost potential undermines global progress in multiple areas of human endeavour, including our capacity to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

--IANS

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