The Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India, in collaboration with Karnataka State Tribal Research Institute, Mysuru, will conduct a health-check up camp for tribal children across the State.
The exercise will be inaugurated at a tribal school in Hunsur on Wednesday and about 150 children will be screened for various health parameters. The initiative has been supported by JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research, Mysuru and All-India Institute of Speech and Hearing.
Termed ‘’Exceptional School Health Camp’’, the initiative will cover all the 112 Ashrama schools catering to tribal children in the State. To start with, 21 Ashrama schools in Mysuru district will be covered and it is expected to take about 3 to 4 months, said Prabha Urs, from the KSTRI.
In all, 3,500 tribal children in Mysuru district will benefit from it and over the course of the next few months the health check-up camp will also cover Chamarajanagar and Kodagu districts before heading to other districts with pockets of tribal population.
Ms. Urs said the focus is on early detection of deficiencies and diagnosis of general health of tribal children and a team of 30 doctors including paediatricians, community health specialists, public health specialists, paediatric dentist, community dentist, ENT surgeons, psychologist, audiologist, speech language pathologist, special educators and laboratory technicians will be part of the health check-up camp.
Those screened and found to be in need of secondary and tertiary care treatment will be linked to JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research and AIISH and this will be dovetailed with State and Central-run schemes, said Ms. Urs.
She said this is an effort to raise and promote child health in school and will help track improvement in health of the tribal children. The KSTRI has developed a school health record book and is planning to use the data and social analytics for interventional research in the days ahead.
