New Delhi

Tata Motors, a subsidiary of Tata Group, has donned the mantle of combating malnutrition among children, who are under five years of age, by providing safe drinking water, especially in drought prone tribal hamlets and habitations. Tata Motors enables an ecosystem that will sustain good health. These interventions include creating awareness on health, bringing about positive attitudinal and behavioural change in communities, strengthening the institutional delivery mechanism, creating public infrastructure like provision of safe drinking water and better sanitation facilities.

The company has created a strong cadre of community health workers who provide basic service at their doorstep. In Pune, Jamshedpur and Lucknow, the mobile medical van ferries the neighbourhood on a regular basis and has arrested many health issues. As a result, the number of patients availing the services has reduced over time.

Apart from providing supplementary diet and supplements to malnourished children, efforts are directed to work on preventive measures like enabling behavioural changes in communities, especially young mothers and parents through awareness sessions, providing antenatal and post-natal services. Added to these interventions are the curative health care services wherein the communities are serviced through diagnosis, administration of generic medicines and consultations.

India is home to 46.6 million stunted children, a third of world's total as per Global Nutrition Report 2018. Nearly half of all under-5 child mortality in India is attributable to undernutrition. Any country cannot aim to attain economic and social development goals without addressing the issue of malnutrition.

Union Minister of Women and Child Development Smriti Zubin Irani on September 17 informed the Rajya Sabha that malnutrition is not a direct cause of death among children. It can, however, increase morbidity and mortality by reducing resistance to infections. Malnourished children are more vulnerable to any infection than normal children. The overall under five mortality rate has reduced from 74.3 (NFHS-3) to 49.7 (NFHS-4) deaths per thousand live births. 

She said the government has accorded high priority to the issue of malnutrition and is implementing several schemes/programmes through States/UTs to address various aspects related to nutrition. This Ministry implements Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana, Anganwadi Services and Scheme for Adolescent Girls under the Umbrella Integrated Child Development Services Scheme (ICDS) as direct targeted interventions to address the problem of malnutrition among Pregnant Women and Lactating Mothers and Children (0-6Years of age) in the country.

Further, the Government has set up POSHAN Abhiyaan on 18.12.2017. The goals of POSHAN Abhiyaan are to achieve improvement in nutritional status of children from 0-6 years, adolescent girls, pregnant women and lactating mothers in a time bound manner. The major activities undertaken are ensuring convergence with various other programmes; Information Technology enabled Common Application Software for strengthening service delivery and interventions; Community Mobilization and Awareness Advocacy leading to Jan Andolan to educate the people on nutritional aspects; Capacity Building of Frontline Functionaries, incentivizing States/UTs for achieving goals, etc.