3.5 cr people in 24 states registered in nutrition monitoring software: WCD Ministry

Over 3.5 crore children and women across Anganwadi centres in 24 states have been registered in nutrition monitoring software ICDS-CAS, a senior Women and Child Development Ministry official said on Tuesday.

The Integrated Child Development Services-Common Application Software (ICDS-CAS), which is available in 11 languages, has a multi-pronged approach for tackling malnutrition that mainly focuses on first 1,000 days since birth, growth monitoring, stakeholder outreach and effective services, WCD Ministry Joint Secretary Sajjan Singh Yadav said.

The software enables Anganwadi workers to register details of community-based events conducted in villages to sensitise the beneficiaries about health and nutrition, Yadav said at an event on 'Delivering for Nutrition in India: Insights from Implementation Research'.

"The software has been rolled out across 24 states with 3.54 crore registered for Anganwadi centre services," he said, adding focusing on the 'first 1,000 days', the software can be used to monitor beneficiary lifecycle starting from pregnancy and auto-generation of priority tasks among others.

For growth monitoring, the software can provide a complete view of the beneficiary child's growth to ICDS functionaries. It also sends system-generated SMS alerts to key stakeholders, Yadav said.

The software also enables and prompts Anganwadi centres to capture photograph of the children at anganwadi centres when home-cooked meal is being served on a daily basis, which also helps in verifying that home-cooked meal is being served, he said.

At the event, researchers and policy-makers discussed the latest evidence on the effectiveness of nutrition interventions for children and women of childbearing age, and how these findings can be used to improve nutrition-related programs and policies.

The event was co-hosted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the National Institute of Nutrition which is India's premier nutrition research institute, and the NITI Aayog.

Studies presented at this event, in the form of oral and poster presentations, took a closer look at the broader themes of integrating technology into ICDS, factors affecting the implementation of ICDS services, evidence on the ICDS' Supplementary Nutrition Program (SNP), maternal nutrition interventions, and scaling-up social and behavioral change communication.

A panel of eminent nutrition stakeholders and policymakers deliberated on ways of using these implementation research findings to improve program coverage, equity and quality.

With a long-term view of strengthening a data-focused environment for implementation of programmes to realise the vision of a healthier and malnutrition-free India by 2022, Purnima Menon from IFPRI said the research community must continue to share emerging insights on each of the thematic areas that India's nutrition mission is focused on and help inform the policy and programme with evidence-based choices.