-Frontline A survey conducted by the Women and Child Development Ministry and UNICEF in 28 States and Delhi presents a dismal picture of crucial maternal and child health indicators. ONE OF the success stories that successive governments at the Centre have regularly narrated is the improvement in maternal and child health indicators, including coverage of various facilities and services that directly or indirectly affect the health and well-being of these cohort...

-Frontline Odisha shows the way in the implementation of the ICDS scheme to ensure that children receive nutrition and care in their earliest years, but the Centre’s moves to slash budgetary allocations could wreak havoc on such programmes. At the Tasarda anganwadi centre in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district, as the auxiliary nurse and midwife (ANM) pulled out the blood pressure (BP) instrument to check a pregnant woman, the children at the anganwadi began...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Anganwadi centres across the country will soon go hi-tech with the government planning to equip them with tablet PC devices installed with a customised software for regular monitoring of nutrition supply to malnourished children. The software will enable anganwadi workers (AWWs) to upload various data like dietary intake and health updates of children and supply of foodgrains and supplementary nutrition on a daily basis. The move will help the government...

-Press Information Bureau/ Ministry of Women and Child Development The Union Minister of Women and Child Development , Smt Maneka Sanjay Gandhi held a meeting with Ms Melinda Gates , co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in New Delhi today.The discussions centred arounda potential partnership to address India’s burden of maternal and childhood malnutrition, among other shared priorities. Smt Maneka Sanjay Gandhi spoke about the plans to launch the National...

-The Hindu The Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana was introduced to provide partial wage compensation during pregnancy, but various issues plague its implementation The latest official figures indicate that India is well short of meeting the Millennium Development Goals that pledged to reduce the country's maternal mortality ratio (MMR) by three quarters and the infant mortality rate (IMR) by two-thirds. The Sample Registration System (SRS), 2013, records MMR at 167 per 1,00,000...