Context:

To unlock the full potential of India’s future, India has to prioritize the health and nutrition of its adolescent girls.

Adolescence & Development:

• Adolescence is a pivotal period of cognitive development and addressing nutritional deficiency during this time can compensate for earlier development gaps in the girl child.
• Adolescent health is a significant indicator of women’s labor force participation in India in the long term, as better nutrition improves every young girl’s prospect to participate in productive activities. 

Ever-growing Nutritional Concern:

• Undernutrition and Anemia: As per National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-21), adolescent girls are particularly vulnerable to undernutrition and anemia due to the onset of menstruation. 
• Underweight: The NFHS-4 numbers have reported over 41.9% of school-going girls as underweight.
• Cultural Norms: A range of factors, from environmental conditions to cultural norms lack a gender-neutral environment within a household, affects the nutrition uptake in adolescent girls. 
• No Special Focus: Despite having various successful government initiatives, the current health interventions do not specifically focus on the nutritional statuses of adolescent girls.
• Lacking Self-Sufficiency: Poorly balanced and insufficient diets can lead to cognitive impairments that affect one’s academic performance.
  • This can result in lower educational attainment, which can limit opportunities for employment and economic self-sufficiency later in life.
• Chronic and Pregnancy Related Diseases: Undernourished adolescent girls are also at a higher risk of chronic diseases and pregnancy complications, which can lead to a higher health-care burden on both families and communities, potentially leading to financial instability and increased poverty. 
• Lacking Participation: If girls are less healthy and less educated, they are less likely to participate fully in society, whether through work, politics, or community involvement.

Steps taken by the Government:

• Scheme for Adolescent Girls (SAG) is to facilitate, educate and empower Adolescent Girls (AGs) so as to enable them to become self-reliant and aware citizens. It has two main components – Nutrition and Non-Nutrition.
  • Nutrition: Provision for providing specified amounts of calories, protein and micronutrients to AGs, etc.
  • Non-nutrition: Includes health check-up, mainstreaming out of school girls into the school system, Iron and Folic Acid (IFA) supplementation, life skill education etc.

• The Prime Minister’s Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nutrition programme (POSHAN) 2.0:  An umbrella scheme announced in Union Budget 2020-21 by merging supplementary nutrition programmes and the POSHAN Abhiyaan.
  • It was launched to strengthen nutritional content, delivery, outreach and outcome, with renewed focus on developing practices that nurture health, wellness and immunity to disease and malnutrition.

• The Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK): It was launched by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) in 2014 to ensure holistic development of the adolescent population.

• Targeted and regionally contextualized Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC):  An approach that promotes and facilitates changes in knowledge, attitudes, norms, beliefs and behaviors.
• National Nutrition Week is observed every year from September 1 to September 7 in a bid to raise awareness about the importance of nutrition for the human body.

Steps taken by the International Organizations:

• The Millennium Development Goals established by the UN member states in 2000 challenge nations to create effective interventions to improve women’s and adolescent girls’ nutrition.
• Sustainable Development Goals, SDG 4 ensures inclusive and equitable quality education and promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Way Forward:

• Inclusive Approach: Need to redefine interventions such that we not only center it around good nutrition but also adopt a life-cycle approach, ensuring that no girl gets left behind.
• Need to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty: Well-nourished girls are more likely to have healthy babies and provide better care for their families.
• Training & Implementation: Routine training of health workers for effective implementation and monitoring of various schemes, and to adapt with an evolving landscape, is also a crucial step in this process. 
• Sustainable Economic Growth: Investing in girls’ nutrition is not only the moral obligation of the state but also an economic one, with potential returns in the form of greater and more sustainable economic growth of the nation.
  • A holistic narrative on adolescent girls’ nutrition, explaining its linkages with overall mental and physical well-being, individual productivity and overall economic growth of the country is needed. 
• Healthier Future: The strength of a nation is measured by its ability to nurture its future generations; hence, need to work collectively to sow the seeds of a healthier, stronger India, where every girl can reach her full potential.

News Source: The Hindu