Poshan Weekly is a knowledge dissemination tool intended to share research, evidence, policy and programme guidelines as well as tools on Maternal and Child Nutrition with colleagues around India.
To renew commitments for nutrition in the context of COVID-19, a critical mass of nutrition stakeholders came together to launch the “Commitment to Action” on 2nd December, 2020. The date marks 1000 days since the launch of the POSHAN Abhiyaan - National Nutrition Mission. The Commitment to Action primarily focuses on 6 priority areas as follows:
1. Sustain leadership for food and nutrition security within the Prime Ministerial and Chief Ministerial Offices, District Magistrates and Panchayats to ensure that POSHAN Abhiyaan is implemented as planned till 2022, and extended till 2025, with ambitious targets and accompanying actions.
2. Ensure uninterrupted, universal and high-quality coverage of selected evidence-informed essential nutrition interventions, with a special focus on children under two years of age, pregnant women and adolescent girls.
3. Ensure adequate financing to deliver at scale the essential nutrition interventions with active attention to equity
4. Accelerate efforts during the crisis to address food security, including dietary diversity and access to adequate micronutrients, primary health care, safe drinking water, environment, household sanitation and address gender issues pertaining to women’s education and delaying the age of conception.
5. Retain nutrition as a development indicator and continue to invest in data systems for periodic data-driven updates on the state of food and nutrition security as the COVID-19 crisis evolves.
6. Leverage the current COVID-19 scenario to emphasize a collective multisectoral approach and strengthen holistic systems for nutrition – food systems, health systems, social protection systems and community systems.
During the launch, the six pillars were discussed in detail as experts and champions in the field of nutrition shared their insights on the challenges in nutrition during COVID-19, the need for strengthening existing nutrition programmes and C²IQ (Coverage, Continuity Intensity & Quality). And that this would only be possible if we joined forces and worked together.
Significant efforts have been made over the past decade. A snapshot of the major nutrition events and progress achieved are captured below. The Commitment to Action is an effort to amplify this work, recognize the nutrition challenges during COVID-19 and collectively work towards enhancing nutrition outcomes.
For more details on the Commitment to Action, please refer to the materials linked below.
