In his monthly radio address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to focus on malnutrition, and said September will be celebrated as ‘Poshan Maah’.
“Many creative and diverse efforts are being made all over the country against malnutrition. The month of September is dedicated to festivals as well as a big campaign related to nutrition. We celebrate the Poshan Maah every year from the 1st to the 30th of September,” Modi said.
He said that the government has taken up a lot of initiatives to curb malnutrition. Apart from Poshan Maah, the government has also provided mobile devices to anganwadi workers and launched Poshan Tracker to record nutritional parameters of the beneficiaries. “Better use of technology and also public participation has become an important part of the nutrition campaign. The Jal Jeevan mission is going to have a big impact in making India malnutrition free,” he said.
“In all the aspirational districts and the states in the North East, 14 to 18 years old daughters have also been brought under the purview of the Poshan Abhiyaan. The solution to the malady of malnutrition is not limited just to these steps - in this fight, many other initiatives also play an important role,” the PM said.
He said people’s movements and community engagements have helped curb malnutrition, and gave the example of Project Sampoorna from Assam’s Bongai village. “The project has a unique way of combating malnutrition – they let the mother of a malnourished child interact with the mother of a nourished child every week, so that there is a healthy exchange of ideas. This has ensured that 90 per cent of the children in the area are healthy,” PM Modi said.
The campaign to combat malnutrition, Poshan Abhiyaan, was launched by the Modi government in 2018. The campaign aimed to improve nutritional parameters of adolescent girls, pregnant women, lactating mothers and children from 0-6 years age.
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