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Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, February 1
The government maintained its past trend of raising health sector allocations with the Interim Budget marking a 16 per cent raise in the budgetary provisions.
The allocation has been raised by Rs 8,538 crore from Rs 52,800 crore in the Budget 2018-2019 to Rs 61,398 crore for 2019-2020.
The chunk of this raise – Rs 5,200 crore of Rs 8,538 crore — has gone for the NDA’s flagship Ayushman Bharat project, the world’s largest financial health protection scheme that guarantees cashless and paperless hospitalisation cover to 50 crore members of 10 crore poor and vulnerable families. These families are classified under the Rural Development Ministry’s Socio Economic Caste Census.
Acting Finance Minister Piyush Goyal mentioned the scheme in his Budget Speech today as a major achievement of the BJP government.
“Earlier a poor man used to be in dilemma whether to fulfill daily needs of the family or save the life of an ailing member. The situation deeply pained our Prime Minister. We launched the world’s largest healthcare programme, Ayushman Bharat, to provide medical treatment to nearly 50 crore people,” Goyal said. He told the House that 10 lakh people had benefitted from the scheme and had availed services that would have otherwise cost them Rs 3,000 crore.
Enhanced allocations for health will also go into building new AIIMs like institutions with the interim FM today saying that 21 AIIMS are either operating in India or have been established. “Of these 21 AIIMS, 14 have been announced since 2014. I am happy to announce the 22nd AIIMS in Haryana,” Goyal said, promising enough funding for the government’s health and wellness push under Ayushman Bharat which has two pillars.
The first pillar is cashless hospitalisation cover for the poor. The second is establishment of 1,50,000 village-level health and wellness centres to provide primary healthcare close to the community. Over 2018-2019, 14,000 such centres have been set up. The plan is to set up all by 2022.
The government today also enhanced health research funding. The Department of Health Research (Indian Council for Medical Research) has got Rs 100 crore extra over the last year’s Budget.
The raise is from Rs 1,800 crore in the 2018-2019 Budget to Rs 1,900 crore in today’s Budget.
Kids’ nutrition plan gets raise
New Delhi, February 1
India’s oldest programme for supplementary nutrition for children, Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), today got a substantial raise of Rs 4,496 crore, from Rs 23,088 crore in the Budget 2018-2019 to Rs 27,584 crore today.
The ICDS aims to provide nutritional push for children up to six years of age, aiding the government’s plan to address child under nutrition.
Child under nutrition can be measured in three indicators — underweight children (low weight for birth), stunted children (low height for age) and wasting (low weight for height). India has poor results on all three indicators, which explains the importance of ICDS to the government.
The latest available National Family Health Survey Data (2015-2016) reported marginal gains against under nutrition, leading the government to recently set up a National Nutrition Mission.
The percentage of underweight children below 5 years of age in India decreased only 10 percentage points in a decade from 48% in 2005-2006 to 38.4% in 2015-2016. — TNS
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