Arunachal: Ayushman Bhava program should reach every village, says CM Pema Khandu

Arunachal Chief Minister Pema Khandu asserted that the Ayushman Bhava program must not be limited to the district hospitals but reach out to each and every village of the state. 

Virtually joining the launch of the Ayushman Bhava campaign by Governor Lt. General KT Parnaik (Rtd), Khandu said that the campaign will work towards saturating the coverage of various health schemes in mission mode for optimum delivery of healthcare services to the last mile in tandem with the Central government’s commitment of ‘sabka vikas’.

Noting that panchayats have to play a seminal role in making the people’s programs more effective, he advised the District Medical Officers (DMOs) to keep them in the loop for coordination and successful implementation of the campaign scheduled from 17th September to 2nd October next. 

He further asked the DMOs to chalk out a detailed program for their respective districts by Thursday and submit the same to concerned deputy commissioners and zila parishad chairpersons as per the program detailed by the Union Health Ministry.

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Immediately after the COVID pandemic, Khandu informed that the state government has on mission mode taken upon itself to upgrade District Hospitals, Community Health Centres, Primary Health Centres, Sub Centres and Health and Wellness Centres across the state. As a result, he said that the state has witnessed significant improvement in Maternal and Child Care, institutional delivery, Critical and Emergency Care, Cancer Care, Renal Care etc. 

“In the last two and half years, the human resources gap in health sector has been substantially bridged bringing it down from the erstwhile 33% to about 6% now,” he revealed. 

Khandu went on to inform that the state government has approved the establishment of a Public Health Nursing Cadre for strengthening the nursing services across the State through the creation of 450 posts of Public Health Nursing Cadre in Groups C, B and A and 623 posts of Hospital Nursing Cadre, comprising of Group B non-gazetted, Group B gazette and Group A posts to meet the pressing secondary healthcare needs due to increasing footfall in the public health facilities.

To meet the Indian Nursing Council Norms, 5 posts of Associate Professors (Nursing) and 18 posts of Assistant Professors (Nursing) have also been created, he informed. 
Khandu also said that the intake capacity of MBBS students at TRIHMS will be enhanced from the present 50 to 110 seats from the next academic session. 

Informing that TRIHMS has started services like Cardiac Cath Lab in addition to existing critical care services like ICUs, renal care, cancer care etc. he said that in order to augment the health human resource of the lone medical college in the state, creation of 272 ancillary posts including nursing officers for TRIHMS was approved during the last Cabinet meeting on August 25.

Khandu expressed satisfaction in the implementation of two significant health services to the needy – PM Jan Arogya Yojana and CM Arogya Arunachal Yojna. He said that while PMJAY has achieved 100% enrollment in 89 villages across 16 districts of the state, 5.7 lakh people have been enrolled under CMAAY and more than 25000 patients have availed tertiary care benefits so far. 

In a significant move, the Chief Minister endorsed decentralization of medicine procurement for government hospitals. Claiming that type of diseases varied from district to district owing to geographic and topographic differences, he suggested procurement of medicines through district committees as per the district’s requirements. 

“Moreover, the medicines centrally procured may get expired by the time these reach the districts from the state capital,” he pointed.

Meanwhile, Khandu appreciated all Nikshay Mitras, who are fighting against TB by supporting the treatment of TB patients, expressing optimism that more would volunteer in future. He also congratulated all ‘best-performing districts’ in various categories who were awarded by the Governor during the occasion.