The Union health ministry will soon introduce universal screening for all children for disease, disability and deficiency which should be followed up by free treatment where required.  This programme aims to cover approximately 14 crore children throughout the country, Union health and family welfare minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said.

Azad was chairing a meeting of state health ministers and senior health officials in New Delhi today.  

Addressing the participants, Azad said that the 12th Plan sets a goal of moving towards universal healthcare to provide quality healthcare to people living even in the remotest part of the country.   “We propose to ensure availability of free generic medicines to everyone coming to a government health facility.  A time bound action plan is necessary to ensure availability of free drugs at Public health facilities at the earliest”, he said.

For new initiatives during the 12th Plan, Azad called for particularly provisioning of services in the remotest and inaccessible areas and to strengthen the identified Sub-Centres which are the first port of call for the community. “The district hospitals must become strong hubs for secondary care.  We plan to strengthen the district hospitals to provide advance secondary and multi-speciality healthcare” Azad said and urged the States to identify the existing gaps and formulate proposals for strengthening of district hospitals.

The minister noted that over the last seven years since NRHM was launched, substantial progress has been made in several areas like Creation of new health infrastructure; Strengthening/upgradation of existing facilities; Addition of nearly 1.6 lakh human resources that include doctors, specialists, nurses, ANMs, para-medic etc; Improvement in the quality of healthcare at public health facilities; Improving the referral transport and out-reach services through Mobile Medical Units as also substantial increase in institutional delivery which in turn has resulted in decline of the IMR & MMR.

Notwithstanding the achievements, Azad said there are several areas of concern that need attention. The slow pace of works to create Health infrastructure is a major area of concern. Irrational deployment of doctors is another reason affecting functionality of the units. He highlighted the large number of vacancies in high focus districts which have relatively poor health indicators.