In what could turn out to be a big leap forward for the people of India where out-of-pocket expense on medicines accounts for a major part of healthcare system, the UPA government today said it is ‘formulating a scheme for distribution of free medicines through Government hospitals and health centers’.
‘We are also formulating a scheme for distribution of free medicines through Government hospitals and health centers’, announced Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from the ramparts of Red Fort on the occasion of 66th Independence Day.
He also announced expansion of government health coverage for people living in towns of the country by converting its flagship programme of National Rural Health Mission(NRHM) into the National Health Mission.
‘The National Rural Health Mission will be converted into a National Health Mission which would cover all villages
and towns in the country,’ he said.
Launched in 2005, the Prime Minister said;’Today this mission (MRHM)is being implemented with the help of 10 lakh health personnel, including 8.5 lakh ASHA workers.
ASHA, or Accredited Social Health Activists, are local women in villages who are trained to act as health ducators and promoters in their communities.
The Prime Minister said that no new case of polio had been reported in the country in the last one and a half years. ‘India does not figure in the list of countries affected by this disease,’ he said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) took India off its polio endemic list early this year after not a single case of the crippling disease was reported for over a year.
Describing malnutrition in children ‘a big challenge’,he said the government has taken steps in many dimensions to deal with this problem.
He said in the last 8 years, the number of mothers and children benefiting from the Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS) has doubled. The ICDS is being made more effective in the next one or two months.
—-UNI