AIR Spotlight: Poshan Tracker

AIR Spotlight is an insightful program featured daily on the All India Radio News on air. In this program, many eminent panellists discuss issues of importance which can be quite helpful in IAS exam preparation.

This article is about the discussion on: ‘Poshan Tracker’.

Participants: 

• Sonu Sood, Anchor
• Neera Mishra, Expert in women and child development

What is Poshan Tracker?

• The ‘Poshan Tracker’ is a mobile-based application rolled out by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India on 1st March 2021 through the National e-Governance Division (NeGD). 
• Poshan Tracker is an important governance tool. Technology under Poshan Tracker is being leveraged for dynamic identification of stunting, wasting, and under-weight prevalence among children and last-mile tracking of nutrition service delivery.
• The Poshan Tracker is a job aid to the Anganwadi worker for efficient delivery of services along with a reflection of their efforts. It is a critical and beneficiary-centric service delivery application under POSHAN Abhiyan which will promote real-time data with analytics.
• Since the launch of POSHAN Tracker, over 14.05 lakh anganwadi workers have downloaded the app, over 7.08 crore beneficiaries have been onboarded on the app, over 1.24 crore take home ration (THR) have been monitored, and 68.79 lakh hot cooked meals (HCM) have been tracked.

What is POSHAN Abhiyaan? 

• The focus of Abhiyaan is to lay emphasis on the nutritional status of adolescent girls, pregnant women, lactating mothers and children from 0-6 years of age. 
• The programme, through the use of technology, convergence and community involvement with a targeted approach strives to reduce the level of stunning, under-nutrition, anaemia and low birth weight in children, as also focus on adolescent girls, pregnant women and lactating mothers, thus holistically addressing malnutrition.
• The objectives of this scheme are:
  • Prevent and reduce stunting in children (0-6 years)
  • Prevent and reduce under-nutrition (underweight prevalence) in children (0-6 years)
  • Reduce the prevalence of anaemia among young children (6-59 months)
  • Reduce the prevalence of anaemia among Women and Adolescent Girls in the age group of 15-49 years
  • Reduce Low Birth Weight (LBW)

Know more about the Poshan Abhiyaan in the linked article.

Significance of this application: 

• It enables real-time tracking of the various health-related schemes of the government and thus enables the government to take remedial steps in case of any discrepancies. 
• Over 1.405 million anganwadi workers have downloaded Poshan, the Women and Child Development Ministry’s app to track nutrition delivery services. 
• The app, which is expected to strengthen and bring transparency to nutrition delivery services, was developed as a governance tool for real-time monitoring of nutritional outcomes and it will be vital in improving maternal and child health.
• POSHAN tracker gives a 360-degree view and tracking of the anganwadi centre, nutrition service deliveries and complete beneficiary management for pregnant women, lactating mothers and children. 
  • Real-time updates of beneficiaries on the defined indicators will enable timely interventions.
• Through this app, leakages in the government scheme are reduced and the effectiveness of the programme is elevated. 
• The app has the provision to generate automated alerts and efficient audits of the delivery system by documenting the real-time attendance of beneficiaries and duty bearers and an effective training feedback mechanism in place.

Read previous AIR Spotlight articles here.

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