Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK)

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Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram or RKSK aims to offer a comprehensive development of 250 million adolescents. This scheme targets to improve nutrition, substance abuse, reproductive health, among other issues. Keep reading to learn about its objective and other essential details.

India houses 250 million adolescents, comprising 20% of India's total population. Issues like the adolescent fertility rate are a significant concern in India. For example, Meghalaya witnessed the growth in adolescent pregnancies with 49 births per 1000 young women. RKSK aims to address such and other issues present among Indian adolescents.

This scheme connects with community-based educators and departments of state governments and ministries to fulfil the following objectives:

1. Develop Proper Reproductive and Sexual Health

Developing reproductive and sexual health includes:

• Offers parental support to adolescent parents
• Reduces adolescent pregnancies.
• Promotes awareness among adolescent parents to avoid birth complications in future.

2. Improve the Mental Health of Adolescents

Only 41% of the adolescent population of India seek help for mental health problems. This scheme ensures that every young individual realises their full potential and makes an informed decision.

3. Prevent Violence and Injuries Among Adolescents

This scheme aims to develop a favourable attitude among adolescents to prevent violence and injuries among them.

4. Improve Nutrition

Improving nutrition among adolescents means

• Address the problem of malnutrition
• Reduce the iron deficiency or anaemia among young boys and girls India

5. Prevent Substance Abuse

Promote awareness among adolescents about the adverse effect of substance misuse.

6. Addressing NCB

Approximately one in every 10 adolescents has developed a smoking habit while one–fourth of them are physically inactive. Moreover, young urban populations especially are more vulnerable to risk factors of developing non-communicable diseases. Therefore, Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram promotes awareness and launches effective programmes to promote a healthy lifestyle among the young population.

Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK) has some additional features. They are as follows-

• RKSK in India aims to fulfil the overall development of adolescents from the LGBTQ community.
• It covers developmental programmes in both rural and urban areas.
• It focuses on 6 Cs, including clinic-based services to communicate with adolescents in their schools, communities and families.
• The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare collaborated with the United Nations Population Fund to develop the National Adolescent Health Strategy.

The primary target groups include the young population between the age of 10 to 19 years. It consists of both married, unmarried males and females irrespective of their economic condition. Young people in school or out of school are also covered under this scheme.

The RKSK program is implemented with the help of the following strategies -

Intervention

• Per educator programme is implemented in selected 200 districts. These are High Priority Districts, and the data is based on the Composite Health Index.
• Community-based intervention.
• Development of AHFCs or Adolescent Friendly Health Clinics and is available across all state health institutions.
• This scheme promotes the Weekly Iron Folic Acid Supplementation Programme for school-going adolescents.
• The Menstrual Hygiene Scheme provides necessary funds to states and Union Territories. This allows state officials to purchase sanitary napkins for girls aged 10-19 years.

Convergence

A discussed earlier, this scheme collaborates with the following ministries -

• Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sport
• Ministry of Labour and Employment
• Ministry of Women and Child Development
• Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment
• Ministry of Human Resource Development

Additionally, several programmes are converged under this scheme -

• National Programme for Non-Communicable Diseases
• National Tobacco Control Programme
• Child Health
• Maternal Health
• National AIDS Control Programme
• National Mental Health Programme
• Family Planning
• Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram

Convergence of programmes and collaboration among ministries strengthen this scheme to utilise the resources effectively to achieve the given objectives. Besides this, the scheme adopts Inter-Personal Communication to promote social and behavioural changes.

No. Officials of the respective state do a field visit and collect data based on proper observations. However, an implementation strategy may vary with each. It is ideal to check official guidelines.

India will continue to house one of the youngest populations worldwide. Hence, schemes like RKSK ensure to eliminate the rising problems among adolescents. However, make sure to read all official guidelines to get informed knowledge.