- On the occasion of International Women’s Day, the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi launched the National Nutrition Mission at a mega event held at Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan on March 8, 2018.
- About the scheme: The National Nutrition Mission (NNM) has been set up with a three year budget of Rs.9046.17 crore commencing from 2017-18.
- The NNM is a comprehensive approach towards raising nutrition level in the country on a war footing.
- It will comprise mapping of various Schemes contributing towards addressing malnutrition, including a very robust convergence mechanism, ICT based Real Time Monitoring system,incentivizing States/UTs for meeting the targets, incentivizing Anganwadi Workers (AWWs) for using IT based tools, eliminating registers used by AWWs, introducing measurement of height of children at the Anganwadi Centres (AWCs), Social Audits, setting-up Nutrition Resource Centres, involving masses throughJan Andolan for their participation on nutrition through various activities, among others.
- Targets: NNM targets to reduce stunting, under-nutrition, anemia (among young children, women and adolescent girls)and reduce low birth weight by 2%, 2%, 3% and 2% per annum respectively.
- Although the target to reduce Stunting is at least 2% p.a., Mission would strive to achieve reduction in Stunting from 38.4% (NFHS-4) to 25% by 2022 (Mission 25 by 2022).
- More than 10 crore people will be benefitted by this programme. All the States and districts will be covered in a phased manner i.e. 315 districts in 2017-18, 235 districts in 2018-19 and remaining districts in 2019-20.
