The ministries of health and women and child development have agreed to work jointly on developing common and standard promotional material and conducting campaigns on schemes for improving nutrition and health of women and children.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan and Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani, in a meeting held on Monday, identified areas of enhanced convergence and collaboration for meeting goals for nutrition and health of women and children to achieve global targets.
Laying out the context of the meeting, Vardhan said, "We are committed to universal health coverage. Our policies and programmes are directed towards making sure that every mother, every child and every adolescent survives and thrives."
He underlined that under-nutrition and other social determinants are closely associated with maternal-child survival and development and since these issues are also a concern for the WCD Ministry, this is a pertinent area of enhanced collaboration for the two ministries.
After the meeting, Vardhan stated that the two ministers have jointly agreed that both their ministries need to work on developing common and standard IEC (information, education and communication) material and joint campaigns, including in vernacular languages, on several schemes which have similar goals, an official statement said.
The aim is to help the beneficiaries with the details of the schemes, and where and how to avail of these.
Using common channels of dissemination through the frontline health workers of the Health Ministry and the anganwadi workers of the WCD Ministry were also discussed, as they are the best ambassadors working very closely within the communities, an official statement said.
Vardhan also stated that adolescent health is another area which shall immensely benefit from converged activities to create awareness about issues such as menstrual hygiene, alcohol and substance abuse, gender violence, mental health and also reduce early marriage, prevent and control under-nutrition and anaemia.
In addition, a joint working group to identify the areas of collaboration, define how common activities will be taken up at the ground level, develop standard communication package, define benchmarks which both ministries have to achieve together, identify areas of research was discussed.
Besides the role and partnership with other ministries such as Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Department of Pharmaceuticals under the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, was mooted.
Irani also proposed that her ministry would support the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) of the Ministry of Science and Technology to establish 10 chairs in national institutes to celebrate women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Similar support from the Ministry of WCD for supporting and encouraging women in the field of innovation and medical research was also discussed.
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