Gates Foundation to design software for govt nutrition mission

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will design a software programme for real-time monitoring of nutrition under the government's proposed 'National Nutrition Mission'.
Melinda, the co-chair of the foundation, met Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi today in this regard.
"We recognize that we need to take the problem of malnutrition in a mission mode with a physical target-driven approach. In the new Mission, we will attempt reaching out to every malnutritioned child with coordinated and targeted delivery of health and supplementary nutrition services.
"There will be extensive use of technology to re-equip the aanganwadi workers, build the capacity of the workers and monitor the progress on a real-time basis. I welcome the willingness of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to partner with us, in order to ensure that every child has the best possible start in life," Maneka said.

Under the Nutrition Mission, anganwadi workers will be given tablet devices and weighing machines, which is linked to GPS, to do real time monitoring of nutrition levels on a daily basis while nutrition laboratories would be set up to test the quality of food being supplied under Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS).
"I believe that every child deserves the chance to live a healthy and productive life, and nutrition plays a critical role in their physical and cognitive development. I look forward to the launch of the National Nutrition Mission and to cementing our partnership with the Ministry in the immediate future," Melinda said, adding that her foundation will also assist in training the anganwadi workers.

Maneka said 40 per cent of malnutrition would not exist if the anganwadi workers do their job.
"The objective of the Mission is to remove irregularities dogging the proper implementation of the ICDS due to the complete absence of any system of monitoring over the last 40 years of its existence," a senior ministry official said.
A five-tier monitoring mechanism has been introduced at the national, state, district, block and anganwadi levels in order to strengthen the performance of ICDS.