PIB TrackerOne child health programme replaces two home-visit schemes
SSBSK folds Home-Based Newborn Care and Home-Based Care for Young Child into a single birth-to-three continuum, with risk-stratified home visits line-listed on the Shaishav App.
What happened
- MoHFW convened a two-day national workshop on SSBSK at Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Maharashtra.
- State nodal officers for child health and the ASHA programme from all 36 States and Union Territories attended.
- The focus was translating the SSBSK Operational Guidelines into district and community implementation.
- The Shaishav App was the workshop's central instrument — line-listing, home visits, referrals and supervision.
- The stated shift is from routine service delivery to early identification and risk-based follow-up.
For Prelims
- SSBSK: Samagra Shishu Bal Swasthya Karyakram, launched 29 June 2026 by J.P. Nadda at the 16th Central Council of Health and Family Welfare conference.
- What it replaces: it integrates Home-Based Newborn Care (HBNC) and Home-Based Care for Young Child (HBYC) into one framework.
- Coverage: every child from birth to 36 months — the vision line is 'Pehle Teen Saal, Sampoorna Dekhbhal'.
- The design idea: a risk-stratified approach that line-lists 'at-risk' newborns and children for intensified follow-up.
- Risk markers: low birth weight · prematurity · delayed initiation of breastfeeding · discharge from a newborn care unit · malnutrition · recurrent illness · developmental delay.
- Home visits: up to 9 for at-risk newborns and 8 for at-risk children, made jointly by ASHAs, ANMs, Community Health Officers and Anganwadi Workers.
- Shaishav App: digital line-listing, visit scheduling, referral follow-up, supportive supervision and a longitudinal child health profile.
- The two clinical windows: the first 7 days decide newborn survival; the first 3 years decide brain development. SSBSK runs under the National Health Mission.
For UPSC: The clearest recent case of the state merging two vertical programmes into one continuum and putting a risk score, rather than a fixed schedule, at the centre of delivery. Use it for health-system design, ASHA-based delivery and early childhood development.
What it is NOT: SSBSK is not facility-based treatment and not a replacement for immunisation or the Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram — it is home and community-based care, and the Shaishav App tracks visits rather than delivering any care itself.
For Mains
Syllabus: GS2.13 · GS2.10 · Linkage L1
Anchor
A universal visit schedule spends most of its effort on children who were never going to fall ill; risk stratification is the state conceding that equal visits are not equal care.
Substantiation (data)
One programme covering birth to 36 months in place of two, with up to nine home visits for at-risk newborns, and nodal officers from all 36 States and UTs at the rollout.
Exemplification
A low-birth-weight baby discharged from a newborn care unit is line-listed on the Shaishav App and followed to age three — the same child was previously handed between HBNC and HBYC.
Problematisation
Delivery falls on ASHAs, ANMs, CHOs and Anganwadi Workers who already carry several programmes, and joint home visits assume a coordination that district systems do not reliably have.
Way-forward
Tie the app's line list to supportive supervision and referral closure, so that identification does not become the whole intervention.
Position
The Ministry's position is that survival is decided in the first seven days and development in the first three years, and a single continuum should cover both.
Deploys into: Health and human resources + government interventions (GS2.13, GS2.10) · child health, early childhood development and frontline health worker systems.
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare · 2026-08-25 · PRID 2303141 · PIB source ↗