New York: According to latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) data in India, 36% of children are stunted, 32% are underweight, and 21% are wasted. All that despite 64% of women exclusively breastfeeding their babies. Behind this alarming data is the barely known fact – pervasive poor breastfeeding techniques that result in babies constantly crying for milk and mother’s giving up in frustration to switch prematurely to external baby feeds if they can afford & easily find.
WHEELS Global Foundation (a social impact platform of global IIT alumni community)’s Newborn Nutritional Health Initiative is scaling pioneering work of IIT Bombay’s Health Spoken Tutorials (HST) team to address pervasive newborn malnutrition at scale. Washington D.C. based RIST (Rural India Supporting Trust) with a large grant is supporting scaling of deployment of this initiative across one of the largest State in India, Madhya Pradesh to impact lives of more than 10 million mothers and babies. After amazing results in several districts across three states (Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Chhattisgarh) where the babies gained as much as five-fold more weight in first six months and exceeded all WHO standards, HST team has taken its Cuedwell technology-enabled train-the-trainer model to enable thousands of health & ICDS workers so mothers can be taught proper breast-feeding and nutritional intake practices.
Paul Glick, Executive Director, RIST talking about RIST partnership
Prof Kannan Moudgalya, Head, IIT Bombay Health Spoken Tutorials program
On April 9, 2024, Consulate General of India (CGI), New York, hosted WHEELS leadership team along with several well-known IIT alumni, and its partners who are complimenting its newborn nutritional health program with daily healthy meals to underserved school kids across rural India — Annapoorna Trust serving more than 9 million meals a day and Akshaya Patra Foundation serving more than 2 million meals a day.
Amb. Vinay Pradhan, Consul General of India, New York said, “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. I am really happy that CGI could partner with WHEELS in a really small way.”
Ratan Agarwal, President, WHEELS Global Foundation said, “Complexity and magnitude of challenges in the health sector of India with its 1.4 billion population are hard to fathom. However, 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.”
Paul Glick, Executive Director, RIST said, “At Rural India Supporting Trust (RIST), we strive to support organizations and programs that are combatting critical issues and providing data-driven solutions to long-term challenges, With this grant and partnership with Wheels Global, we hope to positively impact Madhya Pradesh’s healthcare infrastructure by reducing malnutrition in newborns.”
For further information or to contact WHEELS contact: [email protected]
