Surveillance needed for nutritional security: Renuka Chowdhury

New Delhi, May 17 (UNI) The Government will set up an effective monitoring and surveillance system to provide nutritional security to the needy people, Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury said here today.

An Action Plan in this regard will be put up before the Nutritional Mission very soon, the Minister told a meeting of Executive Committee of the National Nutritional Mission.

Stating that inter-sectoral coordination mechanism was crucial for nutrition promotion, Ms Chowdhury said a mission mode approach would have to be adopted to wipe out iron deficiency, iodine deficiency and other forms of nutritional deficiencies and underlined the critical role that the state governments and ministries related with the Food and Health Ministry could play in this regard.

Highlighting the importance of public awareness, the Minister said nutrition awareness should be included in the curricula of all formal and non-formal education and fortified wheat flour and iodised salt should be included in public food programmes like mid-day meal. Nutrition, she said, should be made a subject of development reviews to be made by Chief Secretaries of the states.

Today's meeting was attended by representatives of the state governments and senior officials of the various ministries, Planning Commission and NGOs who deliberated upon the issues to be taken up during the coming meeting of the National Nutrition Mission to be chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

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