The Consulate General of India in New York Hosts a Press Event for WHEELS to Discuss the ‘Deployment of Our Newborn Nutritional Health Solution in Madhya Pradesh, India’ on 9th April 2024

According to the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) data in India, 36% of children are stunted, 32% are underweight, and 21% are wasted. All that in spite of the fact that 64% of women exclusively breastfeed their babies. Behind this alarming data is the barely known fact – pervasive poor breastfeeding techniques that result in babies constantly crying for milk and mothers giving up in frustration to switch prematurely to external baby feeds if they can afford & easily find them. A problem that is completely fixable, and rather give those 86% of malnourished babies a chance at a healthy life – physically and mentally.

WHEELS Global Foundation (a social impact platform of the global IIT alumni community)’s Newborn Nutritional Health Initiative is scaling the pioneering work of IIT Bombay’s Health Spoken Tutorials (HST) team to address pervasive newborn malnutrition at scale. Washington DC-based RIST (Rural India Supporting Trust) with a large grant is supporting scaling of deployment of this initiative across one of the largest States in India, Madhya Pradesh, to impact the lives of >10m 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 the first six months and exceeded all WHO standards, the 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.

On 9^th April, the 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 >9m meals a day and Akshaya Patra Foundation serving >2m meals a day. Given the massive benefits mothers and babies would drive from these simple-to-learn modules (via IIT-Bombay’s HST team’s >100 10-min long video tutorials) towards a healthy life and healthy society, CGI and WHEELS hope those who missed attending the public event would visit WHEELS’ initiative page to learn and benefit from this pioneering research and dedicated effort from a passionate team, and help scale the effort to entire India and all over the world.

Notable Quotes from the Event:

Amb. Vinay Pradhan, Consul General of India, New York:

“Today we hosted the event where WHEELS Global Foundation launched an initiative to provide technology-enabled solutions for taking care of malnourishment in rural and remote areas in India. 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 governments 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. 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.”

Ratan Agarwal, President, WHEELS Global Foundation: “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: “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. 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. By recognizing the needs of underserved communities, we can collectively work towards building a just and equitable society for all.”

Priyanka Das, Mission Director, National Health Mission, Govt of Madhya Pradesh:

“As a matter of policy, exclusive breastfeeding is mandated in the first 6 months of a newborn. While it sounds so simple, most first-time mothers are unable to have proper suckling by babies. We are grateful to Dr. Rupal Dalal’s research into proper breastfeeding techniques and to Government of India’s Ministry of Education’s support of training innovation Spoken Tutorials at IIT Bombay. In M.P., we are taking the HST program first to seven most challenged districts and then scale to rest of the State through the master-trainer bench we are creating.”

Click here to see the coverage of the event by TV Asia (the largest TV channel for Indian diaspora in USA)

Links to Press Clippings:

1. Press Release by the Consulate General of India, New York – Mera Sangeet

2. Indian Consulate in NY promotes initiative to tackle newborn malnutrition in rural India (newindiaabroad.com)

Twitter posting by Consulate General of India: https://twitter.com/indiainnewyork/status/1778054217938162113?s=48