Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK) is a program to improve the overall quality of life of children and provide comprehensive care to all the children in the community. This program involves screening of children from birth to 18 years of age for four Ds- Defects at birth, Diseases, Deficiencies and Development delays, spanning 32 common health conditions for early detection and free treatment and management, including surgeries at tertiary level. Children diagnosed with identified health conditions are provided early intervention services and follow-up care at the district level. The program also offers flexibility to States to utilize services of private empanelled hospitals which have entered MoU with the States governments to provide treatment for conditions like cardiac cases, congenital defects treatments, thereby ensuring provision of timely care to children. All these services are provided free of cost, thus helping their families reduce out of pocket expenditure incurred on the treatment.

Major strategies followed are:

• Comprehensive newborn screening – at delivery points to screen birth defects of the newborn
• Community screening at the Anganwadi and Government schools for children in the age group 0 -18 years in convergence with Ministry of Women and Child Development and Ministry of Education
• Screening of the newborns/infants by ASHA through the HBNC/HBYC program as a part of Early Childhood Development
• Therapeutic management of the identified children at the District Early Intervention Centres (DEIC)

District Early Intervention Centres, with multitude of services offering developmentally supportive care are being made operational at the district level for follow-up management of referred and treated cases. These units also link these children with tertiary level health services, in case surgical management is required.

Since FY 2014-15 till FY 2023-24, we have reached around 160.82 crore children through 11,821 mobile health teams operating from the block level. 5.63 crore children have availed secondary/ tertiary care treatment for the identified health conditions.

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