Union Cabinet Approved Proposal for Multi-Sectoral Programme Addressing Maternal and Child Care

The Union Cabinet on 24 September 2013 approved the proposal for implementation of the multi-sectoral programme to address the maternal and child under-nutrition in 200 high burden districts in the 12th Five Year Plan.

The objective of the multi-sectoral nutrition programme is to address the maternal and child malnutrition in 200 high burden districts by bringing together various national programmes through strong institutional, programmatic and operational convergence at the State, District, Block and Village levels.

The scheme will cost 1213.19 crore Rupees for the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17) as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme with a Centre and State cost sharing ratio of 90:10 for all components in the North Eastern Region States and special category States. In the other states and union territories, this ratio will be 75:25. In this case, the centre will bear 944.39 crore Rupees while the state will share 268.80 crore Rupees.

Basically, the programme will set a goal to bring coherence in policy, planning and action with core focus on nutrition interventions by including specific pro-nutrition and nutrition sensitive actions in different programmes and schemes through intensified direct and indirect approach. It will bring in strong nutrition focus in various sectoral plans and provide for a limited gap filling support towards key nutrition related interventions. The programme targets to achieve following two objectives:

• Prevention and reduction in child under-nutrition (underweight prevalence in children under 3 years of age)
• Reduction in levels of anemia among young children, adolescent girls and women