Shishu Sathi Scheme

What is the Shishu Sathi scheme?

Shishu Sathi, written in Bengali transliteration as "Sishu Saathi" and meaning "friend of the child", is a scheme of the Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of West Bengal that pays for free cardiac surgery for children with heart disease. Shishu Sathi was flagged off on 21 August 2013 and was designed around a single promise: a child who needs heart surgery in West Bengal should get it, regardless of whether the parents can pay for it.

According to the West Bengal state portal, the state joined hands with government hospitals and three private cardiac hospitals to provide free paediatric cardiac surgery to about 3,000 children each year, with all expenses borne by the State Government. The programme is delivered in the government health system's own referral chain and is closely linked to the child health screening work carried out under the National Health Mission.

Why the scheme exists. Congenital heart disease affects roughly 8 to 10 of every 1,000 live births worldwide, and a significant share of those defects need surgical correction in the first years of life. Paediatric cardiac surgery in a private centre costs several lakh rupees, which places it out of reach of most families. Before Shishu Sathi, a correctable defect frequently went untreated purely because of cost. Shishu Sathi removes the price question from the decision.

Main features

• Free surgery. The full cost of the covered cardiac procedure is met by the State Government.
• No income test. The state portal states that all children are eligible irrespective of family income.
• Active case-finding: health tests are conducted in government schools to detect heart ailments rather than waiting for families to come forward.
• Mixed public-private delivery; surgeries are done at state medical colleges and at empanelled private cardiac hospitals, which is what allows the volume.

Who is eligible for Shishu Sathi?

A child qualifies if:

• The child is a resident of West Bengal.
• The child has been diagnosed with a heart ailment requiring surgical correction; congenital heart disease is the core group, and this is confirmed by echocardiography and a paediatric cardiology assessment.
• The child is within the covered age group. The West Bengal state portal describes free cardiac surgery for children up to 12 years, while other state descriptions of the programme refer to children aged 0 to 18 years. Because the two published figures differ, confirm the age currently applied with your district CMOH rather than relying on either number.
• The case has been referred through the government health system. The BMOH, CMOH, a government hospital or a school health screening team.

A child is not eligible if:

• The family is not resident in West Bengal and is seeking treatment purely as a visitor.
• The condition is not one covered by the programme. Shishu Sathi is a paediatric cardiac programme; the state has spoken of extending it to congenital cataract, cleft lip and cleft palate, but you should verify current coverage before assuming a non-cardiac condition qualifies.
• The patient is an adult. Shishu Sathi is a child health scheme.
• The family bypassed the referral route and admitted the child privately without any government referral. In that situation the hospital bill is a private bill and reimbursement is not part of the scheme's design.

Notably, no income certificate, no BPL card and no caste certificate is required. A family that can afford the surgery and one that cannot are treated identically under the scheme's stated rule.

What documents are needed for Shishu Sathi?

How to apply for Shishu Sathi

1. Get the child examined at a government health facility. Start with the sub-centre, block primary health centre, rural hospital or the paediatric outpatient department of a district hospital. Many cases enter the scheme through school health screening, where a state team detects a murmur or cardiac defect and flags the child.
2. Approach the Block Medical Officer of Health (BMOH) at block level. The BMOH is the designated first contact for Shishu Sathi in the block and initiates the referral.
3. Approach the Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) of your district, in Kolkata, the District Family Welfare Officer (DFWO). The CMOH office handles enrolment under the scheme and issues the referral to an empanelled cardiac centre.
4. Carry the documents, the referral slip, the child's age proof, residence proof and any earlier echocardiography reports or discharge summaries.
5. Attend the assessment at the empanelled hospital. The cardiac centre runs its own echocardiography and paediatric cardiology evaluation, decides whether surgery, a catheter-based procedure or medical management is appropriate, and places the child on the operating schedule.
6. Complete the surgery and follow-up. Keep every discharge summary and follow-up advice sheet, post-operative review is part of the treatment and the same referral chain applies to review visits.

There is no online application form and no self-registration portal for Shishu Sathi. Any website offering paid "Shishu Sathi registration" is not an official channel.

Which hospitals are empanelled under Shishu Sathi?

Facilities named by the West Bengal government in connection with the scheme include:

Government facilities

• IPGMER and SSKM Hospital, Kolkata
• Seth Sukhlal Karnani Memorial Hospital, Kolkata
• B.C. Roy Post Graduate Institute of Paediatric Sciences (B.C. Roy Memorial Hospital for Children), Kolkata
• R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata

Empanelled private cardiac centres

• R.N. Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences, Kolkata
• B.M. Birla Heart Research Centre, Kolkata
• Mission Hospital, Durgapur

The list of empanelled centres can change. Confirm the current referral hospital with the CMOH office before travelling, particularly if you are coming from a district far from Kolkata.

How is the child's case tracked?

Shishu Sathi does not run a public status portal. Tracking is done through the paper and register trail in the health system:

• The BMOH or CMOH office holds the referral record and the date the case was sent onward.
• The empanelled hospital issues an assessment note and, where surgery is advised, a scheduled date.
• After surgery, the discharge summary records the procedure done and the follow-up schedule.

If several weeks pass with no date, go back to the CMOH office with the referral slip rather than waiting. Paediatric cardiac lists are long and cases are prioritised clinically, so an explicit note from the referring doctor about the urgency of the defect matters.

Common problems and how to fix them

• The child was screened at school but nothing happened afterwards. Take the screening record to the BMOH and ask for the referral to be raised formally.
• The hospital asks for payment. The covered procedure is paid for by the state. Report any demand for payment to the district CMOH in writing.
• The child's age is near the ceiling. Because the published age limit varies between sources, get the CMOH office to record the position in writing before the family spends money travelling.
• Non-cardiac condition. If the defect is not cardiac, ask the CMOH about other state health routes; Swasthya Sathi covers hospitalisation for the family more broadly, and the National Health Mission's child health programme covers a wider defect list.
• Distance and travel cost. Surgery is free, but travel and the attendant's stay are not automatically covered. Ask the block health office what patient transport or assistance is available before the admission date.

Where to complain about Shishu Sathi

Raise the matter in this order:

1. Block Medical Officer of Health (BMOH) for anything at block level.
2. Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) of the district, the District Family Welfare Officer in Kolkata, for referral delays, hospital refusal or demands for payment.
3. Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of West Bengal, and the state grievance channel on wb.gov.in, for unresolved cases.

Shishu Sathi treatment is free. No fee is payable to any official, agent or intermediary for a referral, an appointment or an earlier surgery date, and no government officer will ask a family for money to move a case forward.

Common reasons for rejection

Shishu Sathi has no online application and no formal "approve or reject" order, so a case is not rejected on a form. In practice a referral gets turned back, stalled indefinitely, or the family is told the child does not qualify, and the reasons repeat across districts.

Family is not a resident of West Bengal. The scheme is a West Bengal state benefit. A family visiting relatives in the state, or one that has moved out of state but still holds old West Bengal documents, is commonly turned away at the referral stage. Fix: get current residence proof in the parent's name (voter card, ration card, or an Aadhaar with a West Bengal address) before approaching the BMOH, and if the family has recently relocated into the state, be ready to explain the move to the CMOH office directly rather than relying on the health worker at the sub-centre to make that call.

The condition is not cardiac, or is cardiac but outside what the empanelled centre treats. Shishu Sathi is built around congenital and acquired heart disease. A child referred with a murmur that turns out to be innocent, or with a cardiac-adjacent but non-surgical condition, is not taken up for the surgical pathway. Fix: insist on a formal echocardiography report and a written note from the paediatric cardiologist stating whether surgery is indicated; a verbal "nothing to worry about" from a screening camp is not enough to close or reopen a case, get it in writing either way.

The child has crossed the age ceiling used by the referring office. Because the state's own materials describe the covered age band inconsistently (up to 12 years in one place, 0 to 18 years in another), some BMOH or CMOH offices apply the stricter limit and decline to forward a case for a child close to it. Fix: do not accept a verbal refusal on age alone. Ask the CMOH office to record its position in writing, and if the child is between 12 and 18, explicitly ask whether the wider band applies in that district before assuming the case is closed.

No government referral was obtained before admission. If a family admits the child directly to a private hospital, cardiac or otherwise, without first routing through the BMOH, CMOH, a government hospital, or a school screening team, the resulting bill is treated as a private bill. The scheme's design does not include after-the-fact reimbursement for a self-arranged private admission. Fix: always start at the sub-centre, block PHC, or district hospital, even if a private diagnosis already exists, so the referral paperwork is in place before any admission happens.

Missing or inconsistent age and residence documents. A referral slip alone is not enough if the child's age proof or the family's residence proof is missing, illegible, or does not match the name used on the referral. Fix: carry the birth certificate (or an equivalent age document such as an Anganwadi or school record for a very young child) and a residence document for a parent, and check that the spelling of the child's name matches across all of them before the CMOH office processes the file.

The case was raised only at school level and never formally escalated. A defect flagged during school health screening is not automatically a live case with the BMOH; if the screening team's list is not followed up, the referral can sit unactioned indefinitely, which functions the same as a rejection for the family. Fix: after any school screening flags a heart condition, get a copy of that record and personally take it to the BMOH to have a formal referral opened, rather than assuming the screening team will do it.