Child health budget in India: A policy brief

Children need a safe, protecting and enabling environment in which they can learn, grow and develop to their full potential. Therefore, child budget on health and nutrition sectors needs to be discussed to reach out to children. This paper discusses and analyses the different aspects of child budget, flagship schemes and programmes and how it influences the health and nutrition of children. It also throws light upon the COVID-19 pandemic which has impacted on service delivery of nutrition services for children. Around 375 million children (aged between 0-14 years) in India may suffer from the long-lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, including malnutrition to loss of education and work productivity, as per the Centre for Science and Environment 2021 State of India’s Environment report. Budgetary allocation for children in the Union Budget 2019-2020 has shown a marginal increase of 0.05%, going up from 3.24% in the last fiscal to 3.29% in the current fiscal with a grant of 91,644.29 crore. The share is less than the low share of 5% that the National Plan of Action for Children, 2016, had recommended. Though India has set the target of reaching single digit neonatal mortality rate and single digit still birth rate until 2030.No new announcements have been made for children in the union budget of 2019-20.Similarly, health related financial allocation as a share of the child health budget has shown a decline of 0.39% from 3.90% last fiscal to 3.51%. The ambitious target can only be achieved through adequate administrative support and prioritization, proper utilization-of budget through proper planning and implementation of schemes and programmes and infrastructural support through multi-stakeholder actions.