Assam, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu have been awarded as the Best Performing States in implementing National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) which has completed five years.

NRHM, which was started in 2005, was necessitated by the extremely poor primary healthcare infrastructure in the country. To commemorate the completion of five years of successful service, an event was organised by the union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, recently. At the function, the vice president of India M Hamid Ansari presented the 'National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) awards' to the States for their successful implementation of the mission.

Assam has won the best performing state award for implementation of National Rural Health Mission among North Eastern States. Rajasthan was adjudged the best performing state among the High Focus States while Tamil Nadu claimed the award among other states category. Mizoram, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana were placed second in their respective categories. The main aim of the mission is to establishes a functional, community owned, and decentralised health delivery system with inter-sectoral convergence so that parallel action on a wide range of socio-economic determinants like gender, social equality, water sanitation, education etc. is undertaken. It thus marks the shift from a program/scheme mode to a health system mode.

Through the NRHM the central government is acknowledging the leadership of state governments in setting public health priorities and emphasising human resource and governance reforms.
Ansari informed that, NRHM has many challenges to tackle in the coming year like transition from curative to preventive health care, focusing on human resource management which is critical aspect of the immense scaling up represented by the NRHM. Other challenges include setting up of output and outcome targets, convergence which is a powerful theme in the area of human development and inclusive growth. Finally he implied that approaches to public health must look at the different stages of health transition at state and district levels so that appropriate strategies could be adopted.

The Union minister of health and family welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad announced change in focus and strategy in NRHM with a view to adopt an area centric and area specific approach to take healthcare to the door steps of the people living in remote and under served areas. He also announced that for the first time, the central government is providing financial assistance for establishing 265 Graduate in Nursing and Midwifery (GNM) and Auxiliary Nursing Midwife (ANM) schools in those districts which are backward, remote and inaccessible or where there is not even a single GNM or ANM school. This will add nearly 20,000 additional nursing manpower per year. At the same time setting up nine regional institutes of excellence in para medical sciences will produce more than 10,000 additional paramedical personnel annually.