In the next few years, the country’s anganwadis would be driving health databases and provide insights into childhood nutrition, a senior Central government official said here on Sunday.
Joint Secretary, Ministry of Women and Child Development, Rajesh Kumar, said the 14 lakh anganwadi centres in the country would have received IT-enabled devices like smartphones and tablets by 2020. Simultaneously, efforts to facilitate addition of information pertaining to nutritional and health status of children will be underway.
Dr. Kumar said this can help do away with manual registries and gaps in data. Databases at village, mandal, State and national level will be easily available for research and decision making.
He was speaking at the inaugural session of the International Conference on ‘Nutrition Before, Beyond and During the First 1,000 Days of Life’ that is underway at the National Institute of Nutrition.
The institute’s director-in-charge T. Longvah, Anura V. Krupad of St. Johns Medical College, Bengaluru, G.S Toteja, Head for Nutrition at India Council of Medical Research, were present at the event.
