Centre’s health scheme to help urban poor
To bring crores of domestic helps, vegetable vendors and small traders living in urban slums inside a healthcare net, the Centre may soon launch a Rs 33,000-crore mission to provide basic health facilities in the slums.
The proposed National Urban Health Mission aims to cater to crores of urban poor living in slums and outside, who neither get the benefit of routine immunisation for their kids nor that of free medicine and medical advice for common diseases.
With steady upwards movement of urban economy, the slums are growing in sizes, too. According to Census 2001, almost 4.26 crore people lived in slums in 640 cities and towns having population of 50,000 and above. All the 640 cities will be covered in the mission.
The seven-year NUHM seeks to reduce infant mortality rate to 30 per 1000 live births from the 45 plus figure currently and maternal mortality rate to 100/100,000 live births from more than 200 at the moment by 2015. Despite the proximity of the urban poor to health facilities, their access to them is severely restricted.
As per the National Family Health Survey-III, mortality rate of the kids under five among the urban poor is 72.2, much higher than the urban average of 51.9. More than 46 per cent of the urban poor children are underweight and almost 60 per cent miss the immunisation programme.
Other diseases that the mission will target are malaria, kala-azar, dengue, filaria, cataract, leprosy and tuberculosis. For instance, cataract operation for all urban poor is expected to be taken care of by the NUHM by 2015, sources told the Deccan Herald.
The mission will have four components—outreach services, primary urban health centres, referral services and emergency medical services. The plan is to have one outreach session once a month in every slum and set up 4,214 PUHCs.
Nearby hospitals will take care of the referral services whereas for setting up emergency services, the government will provide Rs 20 crore for metros, Rs 10 crore for cities with 10 lakh plus population and Rs 5 crore for other cities with more than a lakh population.
While for the first two years, the Centre and the states will share the burden in 85:15 ratio, and from the third year (2012-13) onwards, urban local bodies will have to share 10 per cent of the cost. The mission envisages Central funding of Rs 25,310 crores and state contribution of Rs 4,949 crore. The municipalities and corporations are expected to chip in Rs 2,739 crores, on an average of Rs 550 crore for five years.
