-The Hindu New Delhi: Anganwadi services have a poor reach among key beneficiaries – the poorest of the poor and uneducated mothers – according to a paper published in a WHO bulletin recently. The government’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) provides a package of six services at anganwadi or child-care centres to young children and Pregnant women and lactating mothers. These services include supplementary nutrition, referral services, immunisation, health check-up, pre-school non-formal...

-TheWire.in The proposed Social Security Code, which brings together fifteen labour laws, is an opportunity to think afresh about the challenge of supporting new mothers – even in the informal economy. Maternity entitlements in the form of wage compensation during pregnancy and after delivery is an internationally accepted right for all women workers. It is also recognised as a supportive mechanism for exclusive breastfeeding, critical for child nutrition and well-being. The legislative...

-DNA The Niti Aayog’s recent report on ‘Strategy for New India @ 75’ rightly recognises that the multidimensional determinants of undernutrition are inadequately reflected in policymaking. It argues that there must be convergent action with annual health, nutrition and sanitation plans being made in an integrated manner for all districts. In the case of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), which is the main programmatic platform through which nutrition outcomes are to...

-The Hindu Business Line Girl child seen as a burden in the region that reels under drought Thirty-eight-year-old Meera Ekhande from Beed district in Marathwada region of Maharashtra had given birth to seven girls and aborted two, but her family kept insisting on having a son. In her tenth pregnancy, Meera was delivered of a stillborn boy and she died because of excessive bleeding. But this is not an isolated case in...

-The Hindu College dropout Jeeva turns life saver for residents of a remote island in the Krishna estuary EELACHETLADIBBA (Andhra Pradesh): Four years ago, when 22-year-old Sykam Jeeva dropped out of junior college unable to cope with academics, he began working at a clinic. A resident of Eelachetladibba island in the Krishna estuary, Mr. Jeeva picked up hands-on basic medical skills at the facility in Nagayalanka, the nearest town on the mainland. Today,...