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Govt hospitals to soon start Aadhaar linked birth registration of newborns
Hospital, community and primary health centres will be provided with a tablet and their staff trained to carry out the enrolment.
Government hospitals and health centres across India will soon start enroling children for Aadhaar – the 12-digit unique identity number – at their premises soon after the child’s birth.
Hospital, community and primary health centres will be provided with a tablet and their staff trained to carry out the enrolment. For generating the unique number, the hospital will get the child’s photograph and biometric detail of one of their parents.
“Enroling children right after birth will ensure better delivery of entitlements and services under Integrated Child Development Scheme and various government run programmes. Not only will it help track the nutritional status of the child from birth but also monitor if anganwadi workers are delivering services at their respective centre,” ABP Pandey, Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) director general, said.
Aadhaar can also be used to track attendance of children in their schools at a later stage, Pandey added.
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Aadhaar-linked birth registration has already started in Haryana on a pilot basis in February. Between February and May, of the total 82,768 birth registered in the state, 36.2% children have been enroled.
The government now wants to expand the programme across India. For covering non-institutional births, health workers and anganwadis have been mapped with nearest government hospital, community and primary health centres.
“The unique identity number can also act as a security net and can be used to track missing children,” an official said.
The government earlier also started enroling about two lakh children living in child care institutions, orphanages and juvenile homes across India for their Aadhaar cards.
