12 lakh Jammu and Kashmir school students get health cards

Arteev Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, August 12

Amid Covid-19 pandemic, the Jammu and Kashmir Administration has completed distribution of 12 lakh student health cards in all government schools “to ensure better healthcare for schoolchildren and facilitate their all-round development”.

The initiative was launched by former Lieutenant Governor of J&K Girish Chandra Murmu on March 5. The cards have been issued under the Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK).

This was disclosed by the Project Director, J&K Samagra Shiksha and Mid-Day Meal (MDM), J&K, Arun Manhas, who described the task as “onerous”. “This health card prepared by the MDM, J&K, in collaboration with the National Health Mission (NHM), J&K, will be the health repository of all students of Class 1 to 12th,” he said.

There are at least 23,747 government schools in Jammu and Kashmir — 12,252 in the Kashmir division and 11,495 in the Jammu province.

According the officials, the student health cards were distributed to all government schools for maintaining a proper health record of all enrolled students and would contain information about the immunisation record of a child, bi-annual examination of a child — head to toe for 4Ds to find out defects at birth, deficiency, diseases and developmental delays.

Under the RBSK, it is mandatory to have medical check-up of students at least once in a year, but under this new student health card, the medical check-up of the students would be done twice in a year.

For the purpose, a calendar would be finalised to fix the time for medical check-ups in collaboration with the NHM.

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