The central government has allowed each medical college to handhold 10 Ayushman Bharat-run health and wellness centres.
With the objective of assuring quality comprehensive primary healthcare services at these wellness centres, the proposal has been cleared by the Mission Steering Group (MSG).
MSG is the highest policy-making and steering institution constituted under the National Health Mission (NHM), which is chaired by top officials including health minister Mansukh Mandaviya, housing minister Hardeep Singh Puri, member of Niti Aayog VK Paul among others.
The proposal was presented to MSG regarding the effective handholding of AB-HWCs in a meeting in January.
The proposal, according to the minutes of the meeting seen by News18, each medical college can adopt 10 Ayushman Bharat-Health and Wellness Centres (AB-HWCs) for the first two years and then, 10 different AB-HWCs for every two years subsequently.
“Medical College will be provided travel/communication and contingency support under NHM for providing the technical support,” the document said.
The proposal, which was later approved by MSG said each medical college in its “department of community medicine” would have an AB-HWC “programme coordinator” who will preferably be an additional or associate or assistant professor.
The proposal estimated that the total financial implication on 648 medical colleges will be Rs 13.99 crore, with an annual budget of Rs 2.16 lakh.
The central government has opened more than 1.60 lakh HWCs to deliver comprehensive primary healthcare, which is free of cost for patients. HWC provides a wide range of services including maternal and child healthcare services, care for non-communicable diseases, palliative and rehabilitative care, oral, eye and ENT care along with mental health and first-level care for emergencies and trauma. It also provides free essential drugs and diagnostic services.
Comments
0 comment