$20b for India health mission

Army officer held for journo murder

NEW DELHI, Nov 23, (Agencies): India has approved a three-year budget for its flagship public health programme almost 20 percent lower than what the health ministry said was needed, according to sources and previously unreported government documents reviewed by Reuters.

The federal finance ministry in August renewed the National Health Mission with $20 billion of funding between 2017-20, against the health ministry’s estimated requirement of $25 billion, the documents showed.

Officials familiar with the plan said the finance ministry reduced planned funding because of other spending priorities and because of state governments’ poor track record of spending the health budgets they’ve been allotted in the past.

The finance and health ministries did not respond to several requests for comment.

The National Health Mission is one of the world’s largest health programmes and forms the backbone of public services in India. It provides everything from free drugs to immunization services to millions of rural poor.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has hiked federal funding for the overall health budget this year as part of a plan to improve care and meet a 2025 goal of raising health expenditure to 2.5 percent of GDP from the current 1.15 percent.

Mission

The National Health Mission typically accounts for about half of the federal health budget and officials said the lower spending approval would make achieving the government’s 2025 target more difficult.

After focusing on maternal and child health for years, the programme had planned to broaden its priorities to tackle the rising threat of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs).

Faced with the lower funding, the health ministry has reduced its threeyear allocation to tackle NCDs such as cancer and diabetes to $1.4 billion, close to half of the estimated need of $2.4 billion, the documents showed.

The Lancet, a British medical journal, last week said NCDs caused a disease burden in India “like never before”. More than 60 percent of deaths in the country during 2016 were due to non-communicable diseases, up from about 38 percent in 1990, according to the publication.

While funding for such diseases up to 2020 will be higher than in recent years, the lower-than-planned approved funding will slow government efforts to tackle these diseases, two government officials said.

“The cutbacks in NCDs (spending) are dangerous ... this can potentially stall the NCD screening and management plan,” said Oommen C. Kurian, a health researcher at the New Delhibased think-tank Observer Research Foundation.

India this year introduced free NCD screening for patients in 100 districts, with plans to eventually cover the country.

Beyond non-communicable diseases, spending on strengthening the health system — such as improving district hospitals and patient transport services — will be an estimated $4.3 billion between 2017-20, a third lower than the ministry’s request.

Planned funding for immunization will be $2.9 billion versus $3.2 billion requested.

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Indian police have arrested a senior army officer for the murder of a journalist shot dead while investigating allegations of financial fraud against him.

Reporter Sudip Dutta Bhaumik was allegedly killed by a junior officer when he went to a paramilitary base in the northeastern state of Tripura on Tuesday to investigate a story.

Police said Tapan Debbarma, the commandant of the Second Tripura State Rifles, was arrested Wednesday on charges he ordered his bodyguard to shoot the reporter.

“He (Debbarma) was arrested yesterday and produced before the magistrate. He has been remanded to 10 days of police custody,” local police superintendent Pradeep Dey told AFP on Thursday.

“His security guard Nandu Reang was arrested on Tuesday itself.”

On Wednesday Bhaumik’s editor Subal Kumar Dey said the murder was linked to articles the reporter had written. He was the third journalist to be killed in as many months in India and newspapers in Tripura on Thursday carried blank editorial pages in protest.