Prime Minister Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana

In News

• The Prime Minister launched the Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission.

Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission

• About:
  • It is one of the largest pan-India schemes for strengthening healthcare infrastructure across the country. It is in addition to the National Health Mission.
• Aim & Objective: 
  • To fill gaps in public health infrastructure, especially in critical care facilities and primary care in both urban and rural areas. 
  • It will provide support for 17,788 rural health and wellness centres in 10 high-focus states.
  • It also aims to build an IT enabled disease surveillance system by developing a network of surveillance laboratories at block, district, regional and national levels, in Metropolitan areas
• Key Points:
  • Through this, critical care services will be available in all the districts of the country with more than five lakh population through exclusive critical care hospital blocks, while the remaining districts will be covered through referral services.
  • Under this, People will have access to a full range of diagnostic services in the public healthcare system through a network of laboratories across the country, and integrated public health labs will be set up in all the districts.
  • Under the scheme, a national institution for one health, four new national institutes for virology, a regional research platform for WHO South East Asia Region, nine biosafety level-III laboratories, and five new regional national centres for disease control will be set up.

Significance

• More Access: People will have access to a full range of diagnostic services in the public healthcare system through a network of laboratories across the nation. 
• Proper Network: An IT enabled disease surveillance system will be made by developing a network of surveillance laboratories at block, district, regional and national levels, in metropolitan areas.
• Institutional Infrastructure: a number of hospitals are being opened up in various districts of Uttar Pradesh.
• Trained Staff:  It will also work towards building up a trained frontline health workforce to respond to any public health emergency.
• Increasing Availability: The scheme also aims to increase the availability of health professionals, correct the existing geographical imbalance in the distribution of medical colleges and effectively utilise the existing infrastructure of district hospitals.
• Investment on R&D:  Increased investments are also targeted to support research on COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, including biomedical research to generate evidence to inform short-term and medium-term response to COVID-19 like pandemics and to develop core capacity to deliver the One Health Approach to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks in animals and humans.

Way Ahead

• National Health Policy (NHP), 2017 envisages raising public health expenditure from the existing 1.15% to 2.5% of GDP by 2025 in a time bound manner. Efforts have to be made in this direction.

Source: TH