National Council on Nutrition:
The Government has recently approved the setting up of new National Nutrition Mission (NNM) to address the problem of malnutrition in the country. There is a provision for setting up of a National Council on India’s Nutritional Challenges under the Chairmanship of Vice-Chairman NITI Aayog.
The Council which has been set up under POSHAN Abhiyaan is the apex body to formulate overall policies, guide and monitor all nutrition based schemes. The mandate of the Council is:
- To provide policy directions to address India’s Nutrition Challenges through coordinated inter-sectoral action
- To coordinate and review convergence among ministries
- To review programmes for nutrition on a quarterly basis
The Council will submit its report to the Prime Minister every six months.
National Nutrition Mission:
- The Government has recently approved the setting up of new National Nutrition Mission (NNM) to address the problem of malnutrition in the country.
- The salient features of the Mission are ensuring convergence – NNM will ensure convergence with various programmes; incentivizing States/ UTs for achieving goals; IT enabled Real Time Monitoring (ICT-RTM); Evaluation; weighing efficiency and making nutrition visible; Community mobilisation awareness advocacy; IEC, Jan Andolan – to educate the people on nutritional aspects, on-line Course on Nutrition for Children, Nutrition message from folk songs and songs on WASH, sending messages on nutrition and also creating ring-tones, Yoga for children at AWCs; strengthening human resource; measuring height and length of children below 6 years of age; roll out of NNM in 315 districts in 2017-18, 235 districts in 2018-19 and remaining districts in 2019-20. A total of about 10 crore beneficiaries are covered under the Mission.