NEW DELHI: Minister for women and child development Smriti Irani informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday that as per data made available by states and Union Territories the number of children identified with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) stands at “less than 10 lakh now.” Responding to a written question, the minister has said that identification and management of SAM is an on-going process.
In response to another query, the minister shared “the states/UTs were requested during Poshan Maah held in September 2020 to carry out a drive for identification and referral of SAM children as a result of which numbers have gone down.” “Steps have also been taken to improve nutritional quality and testing, strengthen delivery and leverage technology under the Poshan Tracker, a robust ICT enabled platform, to improve governance with regard to real time monitoring of provisioning of supplementary nutrition for prompt supervisions and management of services,” the WCD ministry’s reply states.
“Government has advised States/UTs to ensure that the quality of supplementary nutrition conforms to prescribed standards laid down under the Food Safety and Standards Act,” said the reply. As per the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) — 4 (2015-16), 35.7% children under 5 years of age are underweight, 38.4% are stunted and 21% are wasted.