72 mobile health units to be set up in KBK regions

Bhubaneswar, Sep 2 (UNI) The Orissa government is planning to set up mobile health units in 72 blocks of the non-KBK region and telemedicine centres in each district to provide best medicare to the people under the the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scheme.

Announcing this here today, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Sanatan Bisi said the government would appoint 1162 Ayurvedic and Homeopathic doctors to meet the gap in availability of doctors.

The government, he said, had requested the union government to provide assistance to open 13 more ANM training centres in addition to the existing 16 training centres to bridge up the shortage of nurses.

He said the restructuring of the cadres of the doctors and a transparent transfer policy were also under the active consideration of the government while a plan was also afoot to open a centre of excellence nursing institute at MKCG, College Berhampur.

The Health Minister said the state achieved tremendous progress during the last three years in the infant mortality, maternal mortality rate and immunisation programme and institutional delivery sectors.

Under the scheme the infant mortality rate was brought down from 95 per thousand in 2000 to 73 per thousand. He said the government targetted to bring it down to 50 by 2010.

Similarly under the immunisation programme while 52 per cent of the children were covered, it went up to 74.8 per cent this year, the highest increase in any state in the country. The government, he said, targetted to take it to 80 per cent by 2010.

The maternal mortality rate was also significantly reduced and the government planned to bring it 250 per lakh from 358 in 2003. The rate of institutional delivery had increased by 23 per cent during the last two years, he said.

The minister said around 60 per cent of the fund received from the union government was spent during the last three years.

While the government received Rs 114.64 crore in 2005-06, Rs 154.95 crore in 2006-07 and Rs 290.13 crore in 2007-08 under the scheme, it spent Rs Rs 35.34 crore in 2005-06, Rs 94.17 crore in 2006-07 and Rs 163.82 crore in 2007-08.

As many as 47,000 Village Welfare Committees have been formed to improve the medicare system in rural areas and efforts were on to raise the efficiency of the institutions working in the rural areas, he said.

The NRHM was launched in Orissa in June 2005 to provide comprehensive integrated health care to rural people where the demographic indicators and health infrastructures were weak.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik during the day presided over a meeting convened to assess the progress of NRHM in the state.

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