Urban poor healthcare in sick bay

Wait For Cheap Med Aid Gets Longer As Govt Shelves Scheme

 

New Delhi: India’s ambitious national programme to provide quality healthcare to the country’s urban poor — the National Urban Health Mission — has been shelved for the time being and will not be launched during the present 11th five-year plan.
    Designed on the lines of UPA government’s flagship National Rural Health Mission, NUHM was being prepared to provide accessible, affordable and reliable primary healthcare facilities to the 28 crore people living in urban slums in 429 cities and towns. The project had already received in-principle approval from the Planning Commission and was also cleared by the ministry’s Expenditure Finance Committee. However, Union health secretary K Sujatha Rao said that NUHM would now be launched during the 12th plan.
    Rao told TOI, “We have so far focused on energizing India’s rural areas with NRHM. Since there are just two years left in the 11th plan (2007-2012), NUHM will be launched post-2012 now.” She added, “Over the next two years, we will sharpen NUHM’s execution plan and get its strategy right. Once both NUHM and NRHM run simultaneously, we can call it India’s Unified National Health Mission.”
    At present, 60% of the pressure on urban hospitals is because of non-availability of health facilities and doctors in rural areas. In hospitals in state capitals, around 70% of patients are from rural areas, Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad had told TOI.