Ministries to work for women, children welfare

New Delhi : The ministries of Health, and Women and Child Development (WCD) have identified the areas of convergence for enhancing nutrition and health of women and children, and to collaborate at a meeting, here on Tuesday.

The discussion focused on health and nutrition targets for women and children to achieve the global goal. Laying out the context of the meeting, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said, "We are committed to the universal health coverage.

Our policies and programmes are directed towards making sure that every mother, child and adolescent survives and thrives". Minister of Women and Child Development Smriti Irani said, "Under-nutrition and other social determinants are closely associated with maternal-child survival and growth.

Since they are also a concern for her ministry, this is a pertinent area of enhanced collaboration for the two ministries." The Ministers agreed that they must work on developing common and standard IEC (information, education and communication) material and joint campaigns in vernacular languages on several schemes to help the beneficiaries with details of the schemes, and where and how to avail them.

Irani said the Women and Child Development Ministry would support the Department of Biotechnology of the Science and Technology Ministry to set up 10 chairs at national institutes to celebrate women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) as well as in the field of innovation and medical research.