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Health scheme for street children

Md Rajib Hossain
Kalam does not know his identity. He cannot remember his parents, not even have any near and dear ones. He was born and grown up on a road at Hazaribag in the city. The 10 years old boy feels his mother most whenever he becomes sick. During his sickness in last month, he was crying by the name of mother on the roadside. He could not go to a hospital with his very little money or could not buy his own food or any medicine. Nobody paid attention to him.
Kalam's mental and physical agony was culminating thinking the fate of one of his peers who died untreated after suffering from this sort of fever. He left on the roadside with high fever, chill, rigor and repeated convulsions. After 3 days, one kind passerby did notice and admitted him into the Mitford Hospital with his own money.
Kalam’s story depicts more than 200,000 street children floating in Dhaka metropolitan area. Statistics say the terrible thing regarding health status of
street children. More than 73 percent of street children in the city are victims of physical, mental abuse and suffering from various degrees of malnutrition. Street children across the country are out of healthcare facilities.
Health scheme is a dream for them. There is no specific health scheme for these floating children who are highly vulnerable to certain infections like upper respiratory tract infection, diarrheoa, skin diseases, sexually transmitted diseases and highly infectious diseases like HFV/AIDS, hepatitis B, hepatitis C.
According to Save the Children's global report, more than 200 million children under the age of 5 are not receiving proper healthcare, with most of them living in developing countries like Bangladesh.
Hundreds and thousands of our children die or develop fatal illness in course of their childhood due to the lack of simple and basic healthcare facilities. Most of them die due to diseases like pneumonia and diarrhoea which could easily be treated.
The most alarming and frus-
trating thing that has made them vulnerable is lack of immunisation and nutrition. Overcrowding, unhygienic environment and unhealthy foods make the situation worst. Poverty forces most of the children to engage in dangerous and hazardous job. They have very little knowledge regarding work, safety and are continuously risking their lives.
Most of our workplaces have no safely rules or compensatory scheme for ailments caused by working in unhealthy environment.
Street children rarely have the knowledge regarding prevention of disease or regarding their body’s physiology. Awareness of STD/H1V/A1DS is very poor among them. They usually do not
visit the clinics, hospitals or doctors for their healthcare during the episodes of their illness due to poverty and ignorance.
Sometimes they develop the deadly habit of addiction and hook to injectable drugs and other substances in contact with injectable drug users (IUDs) and other addicts.
It was also found that the street children are also habituated to professional blood donation which fuels the spread of transmissible diseases.
Simple healthcare is an urgent need and it should be provided on street. Experts urge that free health screening and an effective children based health scheme should be adopted to protect these children. Preventive healthcare should be on primary focus. The health policy should be aimed at ensuring proper immunisation, nutrition and health education for every child. The barriers to access healthcare should be identified and remove properly. Private-public healthcare system may be devel-oped to ensure proper healthcare and increase awareness among them. The government, NGOs, private service organisations and philanthropists can take action programme for the ill-fated street children. By ensuring their proper physical and mental growth; we can turn them into effective human resources.