New Delhi: Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit
on Saturday launched an ambitious scheme under which nearly 14 lakh
school children in the city will be provided free medical
treatment and health check-ups by Delhi Government.
The scheme was announced by Dikshit while presenting
Delhi government`s budget for 2011-12 in March and a corpus
fund of Rs 100 crore was set up for its implementation.
"It is very unique scheme which is aimed at ensuring
better health for students studying in government schools,"
Dikshit said launching the scheme at a function here.
The `Chacha Nehru Sehat Yojana` aims to provide universal
and free health care to children up to the age of 14 years.
"The future of the country depends very much on the
children and to have quality human resource, we must invest on
health of our children," Dikshit said.
"Through the scheme, we want to make all school
children healthy which will result in making of a healthy
society and healthy nation," she said. The scheme was launched
today on the occasion of 94th birth anniversary of former
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Initially, the scheme will be implemented in 100 schools
and later it will be extended to the remaining 854
government-run schools.
Under the scheme, the government will prepare
comprehensive health profile of all the school children and
will keep them in an electronic format.
Health Minister A K Walia, addressing function, said his
department has already enhanced infrastructure to implement
the scheme.
Education Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely, noting that
education was a priority area for the government, said there
would not be any shortage of resources to ensure better
facilities to the school children.
Dikshit has already instructed the Health Department to
ensure that the proposed health check-up includes medical
testing of all possible diseases as well as providing
immunisation, if required.
Officials said around 117 teams, each consisting of a
doctor, nurse and computer data entry operator, have been
formed and each team will screen around 60 children in a day.
Walia said apart from free general check-up, the
government will also take care of children suffering from
various diseases, besides providing free medicines.
PTI
