Cash transfer in ICDS: UNICEF, govt not on same page

In a summit held at Chennai later this week, the Health Ministry will unveil a host of initiatives in that direction, including a Strategic Roadmap for reproductive Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health that will focus on iron supplementation and other nutritional requirements of adolescent girls, thereby widening the ambit of the programme from only pregnant and lactating mothers.

India is grappling with the problem of neonatal mortality. Nearly half — 0.8 million — of the under-five mortality figures are of babies who die within the first 28 days of birth.

"We will give out state-wise scorecards in the summit, focus on intersectoral coordination. It is important to look at infant mortality in the continuum of care perspective and understand that unless nutritional needs of girls are attended to from a young age it is difficult to reduce the number of low birth weight babies," said Additional Secretary and Mission Director, NRHM, Anuradha Gupta while elaborating on the measures undertaken to meet Millennium Development Goals and go beyond them for the 12th five-year plan.

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