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Indian Consulate in NY promotes initiative to tackle newborn malnutrition in rural India
Washington DC based RIST foundation has supported the program’s deployment in Madhya Pradesh, one of India’s largest states
WHEELS partners, IIT alumni with Indian Ambassador Binaya Pradhan at the Indian consulate in New York press event. / Image-X/@IndiainNewYork
The Consulate General of India in New York hosted an event to promote the Newborn Nutritional Health Initiative led by WHEELS Global Foundation (a social impact platform of global IIT alumni community) earlier this month.
The initiative seeks to address the problem of malnutrition in babies by teaching mothers proper breast-feeding and nutritional intake practices through IIT Bombay’s Health Spoken Tutorials (HST).
“Wheels Global Foundation has been working since last 17-18 years with state governments, rural communities in India making real big difference. While the Govt of India and state govts are doing their bit, there remains a gap because of huge population that we have and the technology aspect remains unattended on some cases,” Ambassador Binay Pradhan said at the event.
“They are doing commendable work in mobilizing IIT Alumni, financial support, working back home with district authorities, national health missions, societies and communities, to tackle the challenges which are otherwise unattended,” he added.
Washington D.C. based RIST (Rural India Supporting Trust) with a $400,000 grant is supporting scaling of deployment of this initiative across one of the largest State in India, Madhya Pradesh, so as to impact lives of approximately 10 million mothers and babies.
“Initiatives like this bring equal-scale optimism through the power of technology, innovation, impact ecosystem, and public-private partnerships, whereby we are able to deliver compelling and repeatable high-impact solutions at scale touching the lives of millions. This is what the society and country expect of IIT brand,” Ratan Agarwal, president, WHEELS Global Foundation said.
The initiative saw successful results in several districts across Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Chhattisgarh where babies gained as much as five-fold more weight in first six months and exceeded all WHO standards.
“With this grant and partnership with Wheels Global, we hope to positively impact Madhya Pradesh’s healthcare infrastructure by reducing malnutrition in newborns. It is vital to address malnutrition at an early stage as it impacts every phase of life and acts as a barrier to future growth and development for children,” Paul Glick, executive director, RIST said.
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