NEW DELHI : The government is tapping into the pool of medical college students to conduct regular health checks at government schools to lower future disease burden.
This follows a direction from the Prime Minister’s Office after a review of education and skill development sectors. The Union health ministry, along with the National Medical Commission (NMC), has directed all medical colleges to depute teams of medical students to schools. “Prime Minister Office (PMO) has reviewed education and skill development and one of the points which have been noted in respect of department of school, education and literacy under heading Implementation of National Education Policy is regular health checkups and screening of children in schools should be carried out.
Technology should be leveraged for this purpose. Students of medical and nursing colleges can be associated for this purpose," Anita Karwal, secretary, department of school and literacy at the education ministry wrote to health secretary Rajesh Bhushan, in a letter seen by Mint.
Following this, Ashish Kumar Panda, deputy secretary at NMC wrote to the deans of all medical colleges, “It is requested to depute interns and PG students of your college to do the health checkup of school children whenever requested by the concerned states/UTs government authorities.