The Chacha Nehru Health Scheme, under which free medical check-up and treatment will be provided to all the school children, will be launched by the Delhi Government on Children's Day, November 14. At a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Friday, it was stated that to begin with the scheme will cover 100 schools.

The scheme had been announced by the Delhi Government in the Budget speech for the year 2011-22 that was made by Ms. Dikshit, who also holds the Finance portfolio. The Delhi Government has since then completed the formalities pertaining to the scheme and is now prepared to implement it.

In the meeting, Ms. Dikshit instructed the Health Department and the Education Department to work in tandem to ensure proper implementation of the scheme. She directed the Health Department to see to it that the proposed health check-up was comprehensive and included all diseases while also taking care of the immunisation gaps.

The Chacha Nehru Health Scheme intends to address the deficiencies and symptoms of disease in children right from the beginning to ensure that they remained healthy.

Ms. Dikshit said it has been decided to launch this scheme on the birth anniversary of first Prime Minister of India Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and to begin with the scheme would be launched in over 100 schools.

It would later be expanded in a phased manner to cover all the 954 Delhi Government schools. She said the scheme would be closely monitored to prepare a comprehensive computerised health profile of school children.

To implement the scheme, that would ultimately cover about 14 lakh school children, around 117 teams consisting of a doctor, primary health nurse and computer data entry operator will be required. Each team will be able to screen 60 children for all diseases including general check-up in one day.

Since the total number of working days in a year is about 200, each team would be able to cover about 12,000 children in a year. So to meet the target of reaching out to about 14 lakh students, 117 teams would be deployed.

Delhi Health Minister A.K. Walia said apart from providing free general check-up to school children, the Delhi Government will also provide free medicines to them and will their treatment if they are diagnosed with any disease. He added that the Health Department will also ensure that all bottlenecks, if any, are cleared immediately so that the scheme could take off smoothly.

The meeting, which was also attended by Chief Secretary P.K. Tripathi, Principal Secretary Health Anshu Prakash, Principal Secretary Finance D.M. Sapolia and Director Health Services Dr. N.V. Kamath, also discussed the spade work that has been done and the infrastructure that has been created to ensure that the scheme succeeds in achieving its goal of having healthy children for a healthy society.