The Centre has asked all the States Governments to prepare Integrated District Health Action Plans at the earliest to specify the convergent measures on health and other determinants of health such as drinking water, sanitation and nutrition.

These action plans will be taken as base for rolling out the National Rural Health Mission programme for which the Central budget had allotted Rs 10890 crore for the current financial year.

With NHRM primarily aims to decentralise the healthcare system in the public sector, every district will have a comprehensive action plan charting the immunisation programmes, health schemes, capacity distribution and funds allocation for welfare schemes to be unfolded under the NHRM, according to the Health Ministry sources.

The Mission, among other declared goals, was also claimed to be an attempt to address long standing ailments of the health system including poor management of resources, centralized decision making, inadequate financing, irregular supplies of drugs and equipments, unacceptable level of absenteeism, corruption, absence of performance based monitoring, inadequate accountability, wanting HRD policies, fragmented and overlapping policies and programmes and inadequate participation of the private sector. Hence, the Centre is of the view that the district-wise action plans will be more effective.

The allocation for the NHRM has been hiked from Rs 8141 crore of the previous year to Rs 10890 crore. National disease control programmes including vector-borne diseases, TB, trachoma and blindness, iodine deficiency disorders, integrated disease surveillance and drug addiction control programmes have been included in the NRHM and a total of Rs 884.06 crore was being envisaged for the purpose.

Among other programmes, it also includes those related to contraception, reproductive and child health, pulse polio immunisation, family welfare schemes and population control programmes.

``The Mission also attempts to fill critical gaps in the system, systemic as well as those relating to human resources, finances, materials and supplies and above all accountability,'' said, an official, noting that comprehensive action plans at the macro-levels will help aim the targets.

As many as 1,41,000 sub-centres have been provided with untied funds to tackle contingencies; 2045 of the 3220 community health Centres have been identified for upgradation to Indian Public Health Standards and over 10,000 health facilities have established patient welfare committees (Rogi Kalyan Samities) under the Mission so far. Over 200,000 doctors, 12000 midwives, 7500 staff nurses and 1200 paramedics have been appointed on contract basis to fill critical manpower gaps in the public health care facilities. Over 1.3 million monthly health and nutrition days have been organized in the rural areas, one million Village Health and Sanitation Committees have been constituted and school health programmes initiated across large part of the country.