Mother, Child and Poshan Tracker

Mother, Child and Poshan Tracker

Context: The rollout of the Poshan Tracker by the Government of India represents the largest mobile phone nutrition monitoring system in the history of global health.
• 2 years since its launch, Poshan tracker has contributed immensely to address issues of malnutrition and health of pregnant mothers.

What is the Poshan Tracker?
• The Poshan Tracker is a centralised ICT-enabled platform, developed to promote transparency and accountability of nutrition service delivery, as part of the new Poshan 2.0 guidelines.

Where is it used?
• The Poshan Tracker is designed to act as a real-time feedback loop for frontline functionaries to prevent malnutrition by identifying children who are faltering at an early stage, targeting beneficiaries facing acute malnutrition, and monitoring the effective delivery of ICDS services.
• It serves as a precursor for targeted investments in healthcare for women and children.

What is the significance of Poshan tracker?
• Nearly 1.3 million Anganwadi workers have downloaded the app across all states and Union territories and are using it every day for monitoring ICDS services.
• Real-time monitoring of more than 50% children in the country is being undertaken. Moreover, 94% of beneficiaries have been Aadhar verified.
• It captures important Data at National, state, district level pertaining i) the Anganwadi infrastructure including the number of Anganwadi centres built, ii) tracking the number of beneficiaries who received take-home rations (not raw rations) and hot cooked meals and iii) monitoring of nutritional outcomes.
• The granularity of Poshan Tracker data is key in addressing the huge variability in malnutrition rates estimated through household-level surveys.
• It makes beneficiary-wise data that is observed on the ground, available for decision-makers for local and timely action.
• It avoids paper-based reporting, enabling real-time transmission of data and reducing scope of manual errors.

Conclusion
• India’s Poshan Tracker represents a groundbreaking initiative in monitoring the nutritional status of women and children on a large scale.
• Nevertheless, it’s crucial to understand that data serves as a tool, not a goal in itself. Therefore, adequate investments must be directed towards delivering essential services when malnutrition is detected in children or mothers