Nutrition monitoring software presently working in 7 states; soon to benefit 10 cr children: WCD

anganwadisNEW DELHI: The new software launched last month to enable real-time monitoring of nutrition is presently being used by anganwadis in seven states and would soon be spread across the country to benefit around 10 crore children, a senior WCD official said today.

The software ‘Integrated Child Development Services-Common Application Software’ (ICDS-CAS) started in May and has been operating in 57 districts of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

The software will help draw nutrition profile of each village and aims to address the problem of malnutrition on a permanent basis. The system will get real-time reports from the grassroots level.

The software would soon be spread to all the states in the country. The aganwadis can record the child information offline, said Rakesh Srivastava, Secretary at the Women and Child Development Ministry.

“All 36 states and union territories, and 718 districts will be covered in a phased manner by the year 2020,” he said

Srivastava said the software would be rolled out across 14 lakh anganwadis.

The software has been developed under the ‘Poshan Abhiyan’, whose primary aim is to bring down stunting of the children in the age group of 0-6 years from 38.4 per cent to 25 per cent by the year 2022.

The ministry will organize a seminar on Thursday on use of technology for steering the ‘Poshan Abhiyan’ program. PTI