Health & Nutrition trends in India – Quarterly report

What is the purpose of this report?

The Prime Minister’s Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nutrition, or POSHAN Abhiyaan, is the Government of India’s flagship programme to improve nutrition outcomes among children, pregnant women and lactating mothers. Administrative data systems like HMIS and ICDS RRS are a rich source of regularly updated granular data on mother and child nutrition. These data are utilised to regularly track state and district performance and to inform programming. A range of efforts are underway to support improvements in the quality of these data. This report inspects varied dimensions of the quality of the data, and then generates substantive insights on mother and child nutrition across states in India over the last quarter. The report covers some critical topics over this period, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on health and nutrition services. The report strengthens the quality of these insights by also using data from the last 48 months to contextualize the current quarter.

The objective of the report is to examine the following question drawing from available administrative data systems: How did key maternal and child health and nutrition services and outcomes perform over January-March 2021 across India?