Odisha launches the Suposhit Odisha Mission to transform 74,224 anganwadis, reduce child malnutrition, and improve nutrition, growth tracking, and monitoring
OdishaPlus Bureau
On Tuesday, Deputy Chief Minister Pravati Parida inaugurated the Suposhit Odisha Mission, a new initiative from the Department of Women and Child Development aimed at eliminating malnutrition among children. This initiative will transform all 74,224 anganwadi centres into certified Suposhit Anganwadis, ensuring that there are no severely underweight or wasted children. The focus will be on enhancing child nutrition and decreasing anaemia, stunting, and wasting throughout Odisha. “We have established clear milestones at the administrative level to designate an anganwadi, a sector, a project, a district, and the state as Suposhit.
A Suposhit sector will be defined as one where 80% of the anganwadi centres do not have any severely underweight or wasted children. Likewise, a project in which 100% of the sectors are Suposhit will be recognized as a Suposhit Project,” stated Parida, who also serves as the minister for women and child development.
Anganwadis will receive annual certification as Suposhit after undergoing an independent verification process, which includes on-site anthropometric measurements and central validation of the existing Poshan tracker data. To enhance monitoring, the Deputy Chief Minister also introduced review and monitoring dashboards that visualize Poshan tracker data in real time, allowing supervisors, CDPOs, and district officials to evaluate outcomes, identify deficiencies, and implement timely interventions.
Parida mentioned that the state government has issued a joint advisory to promote convergence among health, women and child development, Mission Shakti, panchayati raj, ST and SC development, sports and youth services, and school and mass education departments for the screening of children, monitoring their growth, and providing parental counseling. According to the National Family Health Survey-5, nearly 29% of children in Odisha aged 0-5 years are underweight, with a stunting rate of 34.1% and a wasting rate of 18%.