In a move to provide better healthcare to school children, district administration has decided to issue health cards to 25,000 students in 335 primary schools of the city.

Under the scheme 'Arogyadaan', the students, specially poor, will undergo a health check-up by a government doctor or from the Indian Medical Association (IMA) once a month and those with poor health conditions will be administered free medicines including calciums and vitamins.

"We have planned to start the health scheme in 335 government primary schools here. All students will be issued health cards, the process for which will commence from next week," Kanpur District Magistrate Mukesh Meshram said.

"Each health card will have the medical history of the child. We have contacted the IMA and government hospitals in this regard and have received a positive response," he said.

The IMA has assured that each doctor will adopt a school, where they would take care of all aspects starting from check-up to medicines, he added.

One month back, district officials started a scheme 'Vidyadaan' under which volunteers visited government schools, facing shortage of teachers.

There are only 274 teachers in the 335 primary schools of the city whereas the number of students are around 25,000, according to officials.

As part of the project Meshram himself visited a number of schools and found students suffering from various ailments, like poor vision and calcium deficiency.

Several NGOs took part in the project and they too reported the poor health condition of the students which formed the basis for the 'Arogyadaan' scheme.