11/07/2019 - Health | Mainstorming

IAS Parliament 5 years

KEY POINTS

· The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme is one of the world’s largest programmes for early childhood care and development.

· Nutrition and health counselling delivered under the programme’s auspices is a low-cost measure that offers lifelong benefits.

· This timely, non-partisan report is by India Consensus, a partnership between Tata Trusts and Copenhagen Consensus, which has undertaken a first-of-its-kind analysis of 100 government programmes.

· These were identified by NITI Aayog for their role in supporting India’s efforts to achieve the Global Goals.

Significance of nutrition couseliing

· As a behavioural change intervention, nutrition and health counselling is relatively low cost for every person that is reached.

· It’s important to note that this programme does not provide food, but instead provides information to the mother, making it more likely that the child will receive more and better food. And that in turn leads to lifelong benefits.( SDG – 1, SDG- 2).

· Improving the nutrition and health outcomes of the children of mothers reached makes this a highly cost-effective intervention.

· Two analyses were undertaken in Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, looking at a six-year campaign of nutrition counselling and hand-washing.

· The average cost of counselling sessions for each woman was estimated at Rs1,177 and Rs1,250 for Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan respectively.

· Based on previous studies, it is estimated that counselling leads to a 12% reduction in stunting. This leads to better cognitive skills.( SDG – 3)

· With returns like this at stake, there are compelling reasons to look favourably at approaches including nutrition counselling.