-Press release by Right to Food Campaign, dated August 6th, 2020 The Right to Food Campaign has sent a memorandum to the Hon'ble Minister of Women and Child Development Ms. Smriti Zubin Irani demanding to restart the hot cooked meal and Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme. It may be noted that most services for women and children have been shut down since March this year i.e. since the time when...

-The Hindu NITI Aayog’s draft working paper to strengthen the ICDS programme in urban areas For every 100 anganwadi beneficiaries in the country, only seven are in urban areas, according to the government’s response to a Right to Information (RTI) query from The Hindu. This is primarily because of a severe lack of anganwadis in cities, leading to poor coverage of the government’s flagship programme in early childhood development.   Six services Anganwadis or day-care...

-The Telegraph Country fails to achieve infection-control New Delhi: Gaps in immunisation have kept India out of the list of four countries announced by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Friday as having achieved control of hepatitis-B virus infections. The WHO said Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Thailand have achieved hepatitis-B control with the prevalence of the disease dropping to less than one per cent among five-year old children, the criteria for control applied...

-The Hindu Global health body worried about immunisation levels New Delhi: Despite immunisation being one of the most successful and cost-effective means to help children grow into healthy adults, worldwide 12.9 million infants — nearly 1 in 10 — did not receive any vaccination in 2016. The figures released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) during the ongoing immunisation week added that this means infants missed the first dose of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) vaccine...

-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...