The first National Family Health Survey (NFHS) in the year 1992-1993 found that India is also one of the worst performing countries in terms of child health indicators. The Ministry of Women and Child Development is striving to address the problem of malnutrition through systemic measures and programs like Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) including Supplementary Nutrition Programme.
Under this supplementary food/fortified ration is provided to the most vulnerable sections i.e. children below 6 years of age, pregnant women, lactating mothers, and adolescent girls. The central government has laid special emphasis on the potential of technology as a powerful tool to ensure better service delivery. In line with this spirit, the 'Nutrition Tracker Application' was launched in the year 2021. The Nutrition Tracker App was launched with a view to digitizing data/records related to malnutrition and service availability under ICDS from Anganwadi Centers across the country, paving the way for monitoring and policy formulation.
Anganwadi centers and workers were equipped with smartphones for the first time under the POSHAN Abhiyaan. Utilizes nutrition tracker technology to rapidly identify children with age-related stunting, underweight, underweight, and underweight, and monitor nutritional service delivery to the end beneficiary Is going. Nutrition tracker by collecting daily data from over 13.9 lakh functional Anganwadi centers covering more than 9.8 crore beneficiaries, on prescribed indicators including services provided by Anganwadi workers and complete beneficiary management for children, pregnant women, and lactating mothers Enables real-time monitoring and tracking of all Anganwadi centers, Anganwadi workers and beneficiaries.
Anganwadi centers, Anganwadi workers, and beneficiaries are tracked, giving an overall overview of the progress of the program. It is available in regional languages other than Hindi and English. The Ministry has been making continuous efforts to ensure monitoring of delivery of nutrition services to the last mile beneficiary. To ensure this, beneficiaries registered on the nutrition tracker are linked with 'Aadhaar'. If a child's 'Aadhaar' is not available, there is a provision to link it with the mother's 'Aadhaar'.
Linking of beneficiaries with 'Aadhaar' will help in ensuring that there is a good system in place to monitor and track the delivery of nutrition service to the end beneficiary and to pass on the related service to someone else i.e. no leakage or fake entry is possible. So far, about 82 percent of the beneficiaries have been linked with 'Aadhaar'. In addition, the nutrition tracker has enabled the true universalization of Anganwadi services by enabling the migration module.
The migration module contained in the tracker makes it possible to seamlessly transfer the beneficiary records from one Anganwadi center to another within the state or from one state to another. In such a situation, the beneficiaries can get the related nutrition services from anywhere in the country. Data and evidence and feedback loops are essential for decision-making and program design changes to avail services. Nutrition Tracker is not only a data tracking system, but it also enables real-time monitoring of the nutrition program and the efficiency and effectiveness of its service delivery. Integration of Nutrition Tracker with other programmatic tools like the RCH Portal of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare will bring a holistic picture of the health and nutrition indicators of the beneficiaries.
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