Hyderabad, November 15: A first of its kind in the country, the Jawahar Bala Arogya Raksha (JBAR) scheme, a revitalised health programme for 85 lakh children studying in 42,000 government and government-aided schools in the state, was launched across the state by chief minister K Rosaiah at Narsingi in Rangareddy district today.
The government took up the novel scheme to detect diseases in children and treat them at an early stage. ”Our aim is to ensure that no student drops out of the school because of ill health,” Rosaiah added.
Health secretary PV Ramesh said JBAR, also known as Child Health Improvement Programme (CHIP), was an attempt to address the physical and mental health needs of children of the school-going age by conducting screening tests. The tests will begin on December 10 and continue until the schools are closed (March 10, 2011) for the present academic year, and will recommence in June next after the schools reopen.
Teams from primary health centres (PHCs) will conduct the screening tests in each school for two days in a week. Every child will be issued a School Health and Education Record which will record all health events throughout the school career of the student. Each child will be be given a unique ID which he or she will retain for the rest of the school period.
All children will be monitored by the teacher for any illness and if a child falls ill, the health centre concerned will be intimated. The children requiring referral will be sent to the higher medical hospitals. For postreferral, MPHAs will visit the children every month to follow up on the treatment.
An amount of `20 crore has been sanctioned for the scheme _ `10 crore by the state government and `10 crore by the Rajiv Vidya Mission.
–Agencies