-The Hindu India must invest robustly in the world’s largest social programme on early childhood services Being closed since the April 2020-lockdown, anganwadis are slowly reopening. Those in Karnataka, Bihar and Tamil Nadu are opening or considering opening shortly. As part of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), anganwadis play a crucial role in supporting households, particularly from low-income families, by providing childcare, health and nutrition, education, supplementary nutrition, immunisation, health check-up...

-Newsclick.in A large number of vacant Anganwadi posts and non-operationalisation of approved centres are in 5 states alone and are directly impacting nutrition of children and women. In reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Zubin Irani said that 1.93 lakh posts were lying vacant in Anganwadis across the country at various levels. Out of these 1.29 lakh posts lying vacant in five states alone...

The pandemic's first wave had a devastating impact on the livelihoods of rural workers in Bihar (including the self-employed) last year, according to a survey based research, jointly done by economists from Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability at Monash University, Australia and the New Delhi-based Institute for Human Development. A recent press note issued by the authors of the study shows that almost 94.4 percent of the households participating...

-IndiaSpend.com Health data relating to 2020-21 and April-May 2021 in the National Health Mission's Health Management Information System showed a spike in unexplained mortality in rural areas, and disruptions in India's routine immunisations during the Covid-19 pandemic Chennai: Key official health data that pointed to excess mortality and disrupted health services during the Covid-19 pandemic have suddenly gone offline, an IndiaSpend investigation shows. While government officials say that the reason for the...

-Down to Earth As many as 23 million children across the world did not get routine vaccines, according to WHO-Unicef analysis Several years of progress made in routine immunisation in India has been undone due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). According to an estimate released by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef July 15, 2021, as many as 3,038,000 children in India did not receive the first dose of Diptheria-Tetanus-Pertusis...