Pune: ZP to issue health cards to kids from age 3 to 14 years

Pune: The Pune Zilla Parishad (ZP) will soon launch a scheme to provide digital health cards to around 10 lakh children in the 3 to 14-years age group across 13 tehsils in rural Pune.

The initiative is part of an exercise to monitor the children’s health issues at regular intervals and record data regarding the same and the treatment given.

The exercise got significance in view of a ZP survey, according to which there were 1,248 malnourished kids in the rural areas of Pune in the last year. Haveli, Khed, Indapur and Junnar had the most malnourished kids, the survey stated.

Ayush Prasad, the chief executive officer of ZP, told TOI, “Our objective is to monitor the children’s growth chart in a scientific way and provide them health care in time via this exercise.” All anganwadi, private and government school students in the district will benefit from the exercise, which is expected to start in the first week of March.

The ZP officials have chalked out outlines of the exercise and are formulating the implementation plans. “Over 400 community health officers will be roped in for the task at the initial stage. They will mainly collect health details of children, maintain records and provide them necessary treatments. Our endeavour is to conduct their health check up at least once in two months. This would be done by staffers and doctors in rural hospitals, primary health centres and sub -centres in the rural area,” Prasad said.

The ZP also decided to forge ties with six government medical colleges in the state to assist them by carrying out scientific analysis of the children’s health data, Prasad said. “We are already in talks with them,” he added. “We will carry out various studies on children’s health via these colleges and we will take measures on ground, based on their findings,” he added.