Health Cards For Underprivileged Kids Mooted

Under-privileged children will be issued electronic health cards (EHC) to help them access free medical treatment at all state-owned hospitals and primary health centres, the government said yesterday.

"The project head of the Unique Identification Number Authority of India (UIDAI) project, Nandan Nilekani, has already been asked to collect information about such children at a meeting," said Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Dinesh Trivedi.

"Nilekani and I met here at my office on Wednesday to assign the job of children's identification and compiling data and share them with the health ministry to enable it to issue electronic health cards to children of humble backgrounds," said Trivedi.

He said the cards would entitle targeted children to avail free medical treatment in all state-owned hospitals.

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The ministry has also asked Nilekani to work out modalities for making a national health portal that will display facilities available in these hospitals, Trivedi added. (IANS)