New Delhi: Eight years after launching the Anaemia Mukt Bharat programme, the Centre has released new operational guidelines that change how the programme will identify, treat and monitor anaemia.
Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda Monday released the Anaemia Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan Operational Guidelines during the 16th meeting of the Central Council of Health and Family Welfare (CCHFW) at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi. The Health Ministry said the guidelines mark the programme’s transition from Anaemia Mukt Bharat to Anaemia Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan.
“The Anemia Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan and the revised Operational Guidelines seek to shift the focus of anemia management from prophylactic care to therapeutic care through intensified testing, treatment, tracking and case-based management,” the health ministry said.
Anaemia remains one of India’s major nutritional and public health challenges. It occurs when a person has too little haemoglobin or too few healthy red blood cells. As a result, the body’s organs receive less oxygen than they need.
This can cause tiredness, weakness and difficulty concentrating. In children, anaemia can affect growth and brain development, while during pregnancy it increases the risk of complications for both the mother and baby.
The ministry has previously said that iron deficiency, deficiencies in folate (Vitamin B9), vitamin B12, and vitamin A are other nutritional causes of anemia.
“Its widespread prevalence is rooted in poor nutrition, early pregnancies, inadequate maternal care, and limited access to iron-rich foods, making it a pressing public health challenge that demands urgent and sustained action,” the ministry had said earlier.
The revised guidelines, therefore, place greater emphasis on diagnosis and case-based management alongside supplementation.
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What is the 7x7x7 framework
The previous programme followed a 6x6x6 framework, consisting of six beneficiary groups, six interventions and six institutional mechanisms. The revised guidelines expand this to a 7x7x7 framework.
The additional beneficiary group is low birth weight babies aged up to six months. The Ministry said these infants have lower iron stores and are at greater risk of developing anaemia early in life. It said their inclusion is intended to help break “the intergenerational cycle of anemia.”
The guidelines also add “Eating Right” as a programme intervention, encouraging regular consumption of iron-rich and diverse diets. Strengthened Monitoring & Evaluation with digital tracking has been added as a new institutional mechanism.
The T4 approach
The programme’s earlier T3 approach — Test, Treat and Talk — has been replaced by T4: Test, Treat, Talk and Track.
The ministry said that under this approach, beneficiaries will be tested for anaemia and treated according to clinical protocols, counselled on diet and then tracked to ensure follow-up care and referrals where required.
The guidelines also recommend iron given intravenously (IV) for pregnant and breastfeeding women with severe anaemia, or for those who do not improve with iron tablets.
Digital tracking
The new guidelines create a common digital platform for anaemia management.
Haemoglobin records of pregnant women will be linked through the JANANI portal, the government’s digital platform for tracking maternal health services. Children’s records will come from the Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK) portal, which tracks child health screening and services, and the U-WIN (Universal Immunisation WIN) portal, which maintains vaccination records. These records will feed into a single Anaemia Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan Portal.
According to the Ministry, this will allow “the entire continuum of care”—from screening and counselling to treatment and follow-up—to be digitally tracked.
Anaemia has been linked to impaired physical growth, poorer cognitive development, lower productivity and adverse pregnancy outcomes.
The Health Ministry said the revised programme is expected to reduce anaemia across different age groups and contribute to improvements in maternal and child health, including reductions in the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR).
According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), 67.1 per cent of children aged six to 59 months are anaemic. The condition also affects 57 per cent of women aged 15-49 years, 52.2 per cent of pregnant women and 59.1 per cent of adolescent girls aged 15-19 years.
These remain the latest national estimates as the NFHS-6 fact sheets released last month did not report anaemia prevalence.
The government said haemoglobin testing was dropped over concerns about the finger-prick blood sampling method used in earlier surveys. Instead, updated anaemia estimates will come from the Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) Diet and Biomarker Survey, which uses blood drawn from a vein, a method the government says is more accurate.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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