Gandhinagar: Minister of Health, Gujarat, Shri Nitinbhai Patel in the Vidhan Sabha held today declared, Gujarat Government had organized health checkups for around 1.5 crore children under the School Health Program in this year.
He said the progamme was initiated with health check up of only primary school children across the state. But considering the its huge success, the state government extend the health check up services covering Newborns to 6 year old children, children studying in class 1 to 12, Aanganwadi children and also the checkups were conducted for children who don’t go to school.
Shri Nitinbhai Patel was replying to the questions of MLAs from Gandhinagar. He said, 7, 23,785 children of a small district Gandhinagar were covered under the School Health Programme. Besides, 30.25 lakh and 8.51 lakh children were examined in Ahmedabad and Rajkot respectively in last two years, he said.
Rs 16 crore were spent by the state government for the program in Gandhinagar district, and that the state government provides free treatment to all the children suffering major illness like Heart disease, Cancer, Kidney disease etc, he added. He also said that the Bone marrow transplant operations are under considerations.
Gujarat Government under the able leadership of Shri Modi had initiated this significant programme - School Health Program (SHP) with the aim of improving the health status of primary, secondary and higher secondary school children, and also the children of Aanganwadis.
School Health Programme in brief:
SHP covers all the 26 districts, around 1, 568 villages and 8 municipal Corporations of the state. Pointing out the importance of the healthcare for children Shri Modi had said “Not only the society is being sensitized against malnutrition but even the government officials have also shown their concerns for the issue. Many of these officials have adopted Aanganwadis and many of their family members are also associated with it”.
One of the External Evaluation of School Health Program by Datamation Limited, New Delhi showered a great praise the scheme. It revealed some great findings present below:
- Main source of awareness of the program among students was school (94%) followed by friends and neighbours (4.9%)
- The level of awareness about the program among the students was 99.5%, highly impressive.
- Out of the 31.3% students found visual impairment a large number of them i.e., 22.6% got spot treatment and the rest were referred to community health care centres.
- Level of satisfaction was massive, 97.9 % of the beneficiaries were satisfied.
The School Health Program also aims:
- To improve nutritional status of children
- To provide eye check-up and free spectacles to all needy children
- To provide free super-specialty services for cardiac, cancer and kidney diseases to children
- To provide specialist services to needy children
- To awaken health consciousness in children
4 Levels of Health Care:
Efforts that made the difference:
Community Participation & Awareness Activities carried out in last 2 years:
Health care of children is a major challenge prevailing in the society, while the moves like “School Health Program” by the Gujarat Government truly serve as a blessing for the children who are to shape the society tomorrow.
References:
Compendium of Good Governance: Exploring Innovative Approaches, recent best practices in Gujarat.
