By IANS
New Delhi : The number of children receiving supplementary nutrition under a government scheme has registered a 70 percent increase during the last three years.
While about 41.50 million children (0-6 years) and lactating mothers were getting the nutritional support under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) on March 31, 2004, the number increased to 70.54 million on March 31, 2007, the ministry of women and child development said in a release here Tuesday.
As part of the government's efforts to provide healthcare to the masses, there has been a significant increase in the budgetary allocation for the ICDS – from Rs.16.75 billion in 2003-04 to Rs.52.04 billion in 2007-08.
Also, the number of children in the age group of 3-6 years attending Anganwadis – centres for pre-school children – has increased from 20.43 million in March 2004 to 30.08 million in March this year showing an increase of 47 percent.
With the increased intake of children at these centres, their number has gone up to 844,743 in March 2007 from 649,307 in March 2004.
The ICDS has been expanded twice in the recent years since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had been highly concerned about the need to take proper care of child health problems, especially those pertaining to child nutrition and high rate of neonatal deaths.
In the first phase of expansion in 2005-06, the scheme was expanded to cover 466 additional Projects and 188,000 Anganwadi centres across the country.
In order to extend the coverage further, the population norms for setting up these centres were relaxed and the states were asked to send their requirements of centres or mini-centres based on the revised norms.
Accordingly, 166 additional projects, 106,833 Anganwadi centres and 25,943 mini Anganwadis were sanctioned under the second phase of the scheme's expansion during 2006-07.
After the expansion, the number of sanctioned centres has increased from 758,000 in March 2004 to 1.05 million in March 2007.