Union Budget 2021 | Rs 35,000 cr for Covid-19 vaccines; Rs 2.24 lakh crore for health and well being

'I have provided Rs 35,000 crore for COVID vaccines for 2021-22. I commit to provide further funds if required,' the Finance Minister said while presenting the Budget

A month after India launched the world's biggest Covid-19 vaccination drive, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday announced allocating Rs 35,000 crore only for Covid vaccination outside the Health Ministry's budget, but the fine prints of her headline-making claim of allocating Rs 2.24 lakh crore on “health and well being” tells a different story altogether.

The 137% jump in the FY21 budget for “health and well being”, as presented by the minister, has been calculated after combining the allocations for the health ministry with that of the department of drinking water and sanitation as well as the money allocated by the Finance Commission.

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While the department of health received a 9% jump in its allocation – Rs 71,269 crore against last year's budgetary estimate of Rs 65,012 crore – there is a big jump of around Rs 40,000 crore in the allocation of the department of drinking water which plans to provide tap water to every Indian household.

The allocations for Covid-19 vaccines, the Finance Commission grants of nearly Rs 50,000 crore for the health and drinking water departments and the allocation made for expanding the nutrition programme were included to derive such a huge number.

The budget outlay for health and wellbeing is Rs 2,23,846 crores in budgetary estimate 2021-22 as against this year’s budgetary estimate of Rs 94,452 crores an increase of 137%, Sitharaman said, outlining the government's plan of boosting the healthcare sector as Covid-19 continues to cause thousands of new infections each day.

The minister announced a countrywide roll-out of the made-in-India pneumococcal vaccine (manufactured by Serum Institute), which is presently limited to only five states. This will avert more than 50,000 child deaths annually. As anticipated, she made several announcements aiming to boost the health infrastructure a year after the pandemic.

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A new centrally sponsored scheme, PM Atma Nirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana, will be launched with an outlay of about Rs 64,180 crores over six years. This will develop capacities of primary, secondary, and tertiary care health systems, strengthen existing national institutions, and create new institutions, to detect and cure of new and emerging diseases.

Among other things, the money would be utilised setting up integrated public health labs in all districts and 3,382 block public health units in 11 states; establishing critical care hospital blocks in 602 districts and 12 central institutions and strengthening of the National Centre for Disease Control, its five regional branches and 20 metropolitan health surveillance units.

In addition, a national institution for One Health, a Regional Research Platform for WHO South East Asia Region, nine Bio-Safety Level III laboratories and four regional branches of the National Institute for Virology would be set up.