‘Earlier governments neglected the health sector’: PM Modi

 

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi slammed at the Congress Governments that ruled earlier, claiming that they ‘neglected the health sector’, during the launch of a new pan-India healthcare project. Launching the ? 5,000-crore Pradhan Mantri Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission, the Prime Minister said that the current government understands the pain of the poor, the downtrodden, oppressed, backward, middle class, and everyone.

 

‘In the first 70 years of Independence no party focused on building health infrastructure as was needed… The long-term governments in the country, instead of fully developing the country’s healthcare system, deprived it of facilities’, PM said, adding that his government is preparing our health system to tackle any future pandemic. He further said that the Union government is working day and night to improve health facilities in the country.

 

Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission, one of the largest pan-India schemes, is meant to plug the gaps in public health infrastructure, especially in terms of critical care facilities and primary care in urban and rural areas. There are three major aspects of the mission to address the different gaps in the health sector of the country, to provide for a full range of diagnostic services through a network of laboratories, along with setting up integrated public health labs in all districts.

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‘The first is related to the creation of elaborate facilities for diagnostics and treatment. The second aspect of the scheme is related to the testing network for diagnosis of diseases. Under this mission, necessary infrastructure will be developed for the diagnosis, monitoring of diseases’, PM added. Under the scheme, a national institution for health, four new National Institutes for Virology, a regional research platform for WHO South East Asia Region, nine biosafety level-III laboratories, five new regional National Centre for disease control will also be constructed across the nation. It will also support the 17,788 rural health and wellness centres spread across 10 high focus states, along with another 11,024 urban health and wellness centres, in all the states.