Context: Recently, NITI Aayog released a review report in order to warn government to reach the goal of National Nutrition Mission as only 2 years left to reach its goals.
Key highlights of the report
Regarding stunting

• India's targets are conservative as compared to the global target defined by the World Health Assembly (WHA) (prevalence rate of 5% of stunting)
• India’s goal of reducing stunting levels: 13.3% by 2022

Regarding Anaemia

• Reducing prevalence levels among pregnant women 34.4% in 2022 (from 50.3% in 2016)
• Among adolescent girls to 39.66% (from 52.9% in 2016)
• Also considered to be conservative as compared to the WHA's target of halving prevalence levels.

Suggestions of the report

• Government must be stepped up in order to meet the targets set by the Centre to reduce stunting, wasting, and anaemia by 2022.
• To quickly graduate to a POSHAN-plus strategy, apart from continued strengthening the four pillars of the Abhiyaan.
• Requires renewed focus on other social determinants in addition to addressing the governance challenges of NHM/ ICDS delivery mechanisms.
• To lay as much emphasis on complementary feeding as it does on breastfeeding.
• It can help avert 60% of the total stunting cases in India.
• Improved water, sanitation, hand washing with soap and hygienic disposal of children’s stools as other interventions which could help avert a quarter of the stunting cases.
• Government must implement interventions beyond the health sector and its focus on distribution of Iron Folic Acid (IFA) tablets.

National Nutrition Mission or the Poshan Abhiyaan

• It is also known as Holistic Nutrition or POSHAN (Prime Minister’s Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nutrition) Abhiyaan.
• It is government’s flagship programme to improve nutritional outcomes for children, pregnant women and lactating mothers.
• It was launched on the occasion of the International Women’s Day on 8 March, 2018 from Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan.
• Being world’s largest nutrition programme, the mission has specific targets to be achieved by 2022.

Aim

• To reduce stunting and wasting by 2% per year (total 6% until 2022) among children
• To reduce anemia by 3% per year (total 9% until 2022) among children, adolescent girls and pregnant women and lactating mothers.

Four-point strategy/pillars for implementation of the mission are

• Inter-sectoral convergence for better service delivery
• Use of technology (ICT) for real time growth monitoring and tracking of women and     children
• Intensified health and nutrition services for the first 1000 days
• Jan Andolan

Role of NITI Aayog

• NITI Aayog has been entrusted with the task of closely monitoring the POSHAN Abhiyaan and undertaking periodic evaluations through Technical Support Unit (TSU).
• As a part of its mandate, NITI Aayog is required to submit implementation status reports of POSHAN Abhiyaan every six months to the PMO.
• The first bi-annual report was prepared and presented at third National Nutrition Council on India’s Nutrition Challenges in November 2018.

Key Facts

• Month of September is celebrated as Rashtriya POSHAN Maah.
• The activities in POSHAN Maah focused on Social Behavioural Change and Communication (SBCC).
• More than a third of children under five suffer from stunting and wasting and 40% of children between one and four are anaemic.
• Over 50% of pregnant and non-pregnant women were found to be anaemic.