Prime Minister Narendra Modi. File
| Photo Credit: ANI

New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch development projects worth nearly Rs 12,850 crore on Tuesday and also extend his government’s flagship health insurance scheme Ayushman Bharat to all senior citizens aged 70 years and above.

PM Modi has chosen to unveil the major health sector push on the occasion of the ninth Ayurveda Day and the birth anniversary of Dhanvantari, considered the god of medicine.

At a separate event, he will also distribute more than 51,000 appointment letters to the youth as part of his government’s ‘Rozgar Mela’, an official statement said.

Noting that it has been the constant endeavour of the prime minister to provide quality healthcare services in the country, another statement said PM Modi will inaugurate Phase II of India’s first All India Institute of Ayurveda in the national capital.

It includes a Panchakarma hospital, an ayurvedic pharmacy for drug manufacturing, a sports medicine unit, a central library, an IT and start-ups incubation centre and a 500-seat auditorium among others.

He will also inaugurate three medical colleges at Mandsaur, Neemuch and Seoni in Madhya Pradesh.

Further, the prime minister will inaugurate facility and service extensions at various AIIMS — Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh, Kalyani in West Bengal, Patna in Bihar, Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, Guwahati in Assam and in New Delhi — which will also include a Jan Aushadhi Kendra.

He will also lay the foundation stones of five nursing colleges in Shivpuri, Ratlam, Khandwa, Rajgarh and Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, 21 critical care blocks at Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Manipur, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan under Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission (PM-ABHIM), and several facilities and service extensions at AIIMS in New Delhi and in Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh.

Among other projects, he will inaugurate an ESIC hospital at Indore in Madhya Pradesh and lay the foundation stone for ESIC hospitals at Faridabad in Haryana, Bommasandra and Narasapur in Karnataka, Indore in Madhya Pradesh, Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, and Atchutapuram in Andhra Pradesh. These projects will bring healthcare benefits to around 55 lakh ESI beneficiaries.

In an innovative usage of drone technology to enhance service delivery and make healthcare more accessible, PM Modi will launch drone services at 11 tertiary healthcare institutions.

These are AIIMS Rishikesh in Uttarakhand, AIIMS Bibinagar in Telangana, AIIMS Guwahati in Assam, AIIMS Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, AIIMS Jodhpur in Rajasthan, AIIMS Patna in Bihar, AIIMS Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh, AIIMS Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh, AIIMS Raipur in Chhattisgarh, AIIMS Mangalagiri in Andhra Pradesh and RIMS Imphal in Manipur.

He will launch a helicopter emergency medical service from AIIMS Rishikesh, which will help deliver medical care speedily.

The prime minister will also launch the U-WIN portal that seeks to benefit pregnant women and infants by fully digitalizing the vaccination process.

Among many other projects whose foundation stones will be laid are one central research institute in yoga and naturopathy each at Khordha in Odisha and Raipur in Chhattisgarh and four centres of excellence at NIPER Ahmedabad in Gujarat for medical devices, NIPER Hyderabad in Telangana for bulk drugs, NIPER Guwahati in Assam for phytopharmaceuticals, and NIPER Mohali in Punjab for anti-bacterial anti-viral drug discovery and development.

In a major boost to the Make in India initiative in the healthcare sector, the prime minister will inaugurate five projects under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for medical devices and bulk drugs at Vapi in Gujarat, Hyderabad in Telangana, Bengaluru in Karnataka, Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh and Nalagarh in Himachal Pradesh, the statement said.

These units will manufacture high-end medical devices, such as body implants and critical care equipment, along with important bulk drugs. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Delhi Lt Governor V K Saxena has asked Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to implement the Centre’s Ayushman Bharat scheme in the national capital, saying its non-implementation is causing suffering to poor patients, Raj Niwas officials said on Sunday.

Delhi Health Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj responded by saying the Lt Governor is not aware of the ground realities. The patient load from the neighbouring BJP-ruled states’ hospitals is comparable to Delhi’s hospitals under Ayushman Bharat, he said.

Mr Saxena has recalled the file related to Ayushman Bharat in regard to invoking Rule 19(5) of Transaction of Business Rules and asked the chief minister to implement the scheme at the earliest for the benefit of poorest of the poor, Raj Niwas officials said.

“I am constrained to underline here that an issue as important as the very health of our people seems to have fallen prey to mindless politicking aimed only at one-upmanship and credit grabbing,” Mr Saxena said in a file noting.

Mr Saxena, while disposing the file outlined that the government, despite having given in-principle approval for the implementation of Ayushman Bharat scheme way back in 2018 and having announced it even in its budget in 2020, had stalled it.

He also outlined the fact that the waiting list for issue of ration card to the deserving beneficiaries has applicants waiting since 2018. In the absence of such documents, poor sick patients suffering from serious ailments could not avail of health benefits under other available schemes, he said.

Mr Saxena also highlighted the state of public health and government hospitals in Delhi.

“Be it availability of beds, construction of newer hospitals or the availability of diagnostic equipments as basic as CT scan machines and irregularities in the functioning of Mohalla clinics, all these leave much to be desired.

“It goes without saying that GNCTD needs to put its act together, as far as public health is concerned and any hesitation on part of the government in accepting schemes/help on part of the Govt of India, because of extraneous irrelevant reasons, will account for nothing less than playing with the critical issue of health and well-being of the people of Delhi,” the LG noted in the file.

Mr Saxena said it would be in the interest of the people of Delhi that the scheme is implemented at the earliest in the national capital.

“Such progressive steps would not only alleviate the financial burden on low-income families and lakhs of migrants but also contribute to the overall well-being and health security of the people of Delhi,” Mr Saxena said in the file noting.

The LG stressed that successive health ministers since 2018 – Satyendar Jain, Manish Sisodia and Bharadwaj – on as many as six occasions stalled the file on “flimsy political pretext” despite the fact that their aim of credit seeking had been addressed right in the beginning, with the Government of India clarifying that Ayushman Bharat could be suffixed with any name that the Delhi government wanted.

In a statement, Delhi minister Bharadwaj said at most of the hospitals in Delhi – especially GTB Hospital, LBS Hospital and Rao Tula Ram Hospital – which are situated either at the border of Uttar Pradesh or Haryana, the patient load from the BJP-ruled neighbouring states is comparable to the patient load from Delhi in these hospitals.

“In certain hospitals like GB Pant Hospital, almost half of the total number of surgeries performed is on patients from states wherein the Ayushman Bharat scheme is operational, like the BJP-ruled states of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. It is very sad to see that though the LG is boasting about the Ayushman Bharat scheme, there is practically no success on the ground,” he said.

Mr Bharadwaj said the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had recently highlighted many grave discrepancies in the Ayushman Bharat scheme including invalid names, unrealistic dates of birth, duplicate health IDs and unrealistic family sizes in the database of Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY).

“The CAG had further reported that ineligible households were found registered as PMJAY beneficiaries and had availed the benefits ranging between Rs 0.12 lakh to Rs 22.44 crore under the scheme,” the minister said.

He requested the LG to direct the health secretary to accompany the health minister during the inspections of hospitals and other healthcare facilities. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)