New Delhi: Poshan Tracker, a mobile phone-based nutrition surveillance system by the Indian government often estimates a lower prevalence of undernutrition in children compared to the numbers estimated by the National Family Health Survey 2019-2021, researchers commented in The Lancet Regional Health Southeast Asia, a peer-reviewed medical journal.
As per a report published in The Telegraph, researchers in India and the UK who have tracked the data provided by the surveillance tool have pointed out discrepancies between Poshan’s data and NFHS 2019-2021 estimates on two key measures of undernutrition — underweight and wasting — a marker for severe malnutrition.
Launched by the Union women and child development ministry, the Poshan Tracker captures real-time information on child nutrition, covering over 95% of children in the anganwadi centres. The anganwadi workers who provide nutritional support to children measure the weight and height of children in their respective centre for the Poshan Tracker which is a public dashboard comprising of monthly data from all the states, the report mentioned.
According to the Poshan Tracker, 39% of around 83 million children in the anganwadi centres in September 2023 had experienced stunting which was 1.8 percentage points lower than the NFHS data. Similarly, the Poshan Tracker data showed that 18% children were underweight which was 13.7 % lower than NFHS data and wasting prevalence was 6% which was 12.1 percentage points lower than in the NFHS data, researchers Lindsay Jaacks, Ananya Awasthi and Apoorva Kalra wrote in their commentary.
As per The Telegraph, Jaacks is a professor and chair of global health and nutrition at the University of Edinburgh. Awasthi and Kalra are at Anuvaad Solutions, a non-profit in India working on health and nutrition.
The researchers underlined that these discrepancies might be due to the fact that Poshan Tracker captures data from children in anganwadis and presents the true picture of undernutrition prevalent in 2023 while the NFHS 2019-21 has the older data. Further, the researchers noted that real-time-community monitoring using Poshan Tracker might have only resulted in improved delivery of nutrition services.
