Healthcare schemes

Lack of affordable, accessible and adequate healthcare is distressful to large sections of the society despite rapid strides the country has taken in developing state of the art technologies in health sector comparable to the best in the world. The Centre's Ayushman Bharat project (2018-2022) has been notified under the National Health Protection Mission (NHPM) with its National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), which plans insurance cover of up to 5 lakh

annually to 10 crore families and nearly 50 lakh beneficiaries -- almost 40 per cent of the population, is salutary. It is imperative that the scheme reaches the right person at the right time. The States which are running their own Health schemes may have to integrate well with the NHPS. Whether or not the States can cope with the huge burden is debatable. The NHPM's plan is to be broad based, holistic and practical. Healthy individual is a productive worker; so a worker's overall well-being is, more often than not, bound to augment work efficiency. The NHPM's direction is towards boosting health promotion and specific protection through a robust primary health care. Clean water, pure air, acceptable nutrition, proper sewage disposal are all part of insuring a citizen against disease. Quality, empowerment, training and regulation are key features for the AB and NHPS to succeed. — Ganapathi Bhat