Sindh Social Protection Authority
Government of Sindh has been implementing Accelerated Action Plan for Reduction of Stunting and Malnutrition (AAP). The AAP aims to reduce stunting in Sindh by at least 1 percentage point per year, i.e. from 48% to 43% by 2021 and to 30% by 2026, by increasing and expanding the coverage of multi-sectoral interventions proven to reduce stunting in the first five years of children’s lives. It comprises objectives and expected outcomes related to the underlying causes (by sectors) of stunting: health, population, sanitation and hygiene, agriculture, social protection and education.
Nutrition centric social protection component of AAP – Sindh, for reduction of stunting and malnutrition, envisages a pilot Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program to create demand for health and nutrition (H&N) services, promote behavioural change, and increase the uptake of these services focused on the first 1000 days of life by incentivizing health check-ups of pregnant and lactating mothers, growth monitoring and immunization of children under 2 years of age, through the provision of a regular and predictable cash transfer to targeted poor and vulnerable households.
A Sindh Social Protection Authority (SSPA) in the Chief Minister’s Secretariat has been established with a mandate to steer the Health and Nutrition CCT (H&N CCT) program, in collaboration with relevant stakeholders, and perform key functions such as, social mobilization, communication, enrolment, compliance verification, payment, grievance redress and monitoring and evaluation for the design and implementation of the program. The SPSU is headed by a Program Coordinator and comprises suitably qualified and experienced staff. As supply side health and nutrition service provision is a pre-requisite for a demand-side CCT intervention, the Department of Health, Sindh will facilitate the implementation through health facilities staff, cross verification of information on co-responsibilities, in order to promote regular health check-ups, immunization, screening and counselling of beneficiaries.