New Delhi, April 13 (Inditop.com) The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), the flagship central government scheme for better healthcare in rural India, is likely to get an eight year extension from its current target year of 2012, a top health ministry official said Tuesday.
“The scheme has just completed five years and I think it will take not less than 15 years to bring a certain degree of desired outcome,” Health Secretary K. Sujatha Rao told Inditop on the sidelines of a programme here.
“You know how vast India is. We have achieved certain goals but there is a lot of ground to be covered. If you go to the rural areas you will see the situation. Why far, go to Bundelkhand (in Uttar Pradesh) to see the amount of work needed to be done,” she said.
The scheme, which was rolled out by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in April 2005, had an initial mandate for seven years. But looking at the huge task of providing affordable health and reaching rural hinterlands, the scheme is expected to get an eight year extension.
In the last five years, India has spent at least Rs.53,000 crore on this project. Under this scheme, the government has appointed 700,000 accredited social health activists better known as ASHAs and constructed and repaired over 10,000 primary and community health centres across the country.
The rural health programme has also helped in reducing maternal mortality from 301 to 254 for every 100,000 live births. Similarly, the infant mortality has gone down to 53 as against 58 for 100,000 live births.
However, the situation in primary healthcare centres remains grim with nearly 150,000 of them not having a single doctor, according to the data. The shortage of doctors in rural areas has pushed poor people to avail private medical services.
On Monday Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad had said that due to inadequate facilities in villages, poor people go to private hospitals and get debt ridden. They sell their property, home assets to pay the medical bills.
