WCD, Ayush ministries sign Mou for nutritional interventions in 5 'Utkarsh' districts

A senior official said the target beneficiaries are 94,635 adolescent girls in the 14-18 age group who are registered on the Poshan Tracker.

An agreement has been signed between the Ayush Ministry and the Women and Child Development Ministry to bring in Ayush interventions in dealing with the nutritional needs of adolescent girls in five "Utkarsh" districts.

These five districts are Dhubri in Assam, Bastar in Chhattisgarh, Paschimi Singhbhum in Jharkhand, Gadchiroli in Maharashtra, and Dholpur in Rajasthan. A senior official said the target beneficiaries are 94,635 adolescent girls in the 14-18 age group who are registered on the Poshan Tracker. Under the MoU, the ICMR and the Ministry of Ayush will jointly facilitate the AYUSH-ICMR-AIIMS Centre for Advanced Research and conduct joint research on integrative medicine, starting with anaemia for which ayurvedic formulations like Draksha ovalcha and Punarnava Mandura will be used, according to an official statement.

Under the agreement, building research capacity through training, conferences, workshops, and seminars with the active participation of researchers of integrative healthcare would be enhanced. Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani said it is one of the unique agreements which sees the integration of both modern medicine and Ayush. Ayush Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said that through the agreement both the ministries have taken a vow to make "anaemia-mukt Bharat".

Under the Mission Utkarsh, launched in January 2022, 15 central ministries and departments are working to bring select key performance indicators in bottom districts to the state and national average.