Union Budget 2023: Centre slashes National Health Mission allocation

India’s health budget in the next fiscal is set to be hiked by just about 3.6 per cent with no extra allocations on Covid three years after the pandemic exposed the world’s most populous nation’s poor health preparedness, but the outlay for a government sponsored family health insurance for the poor will be enhanced ahead of the 2024 general election.

The budgetary allocation for the Department of Health and Family Welfare has been pegged at Rs 86,175 crore, marginally up from last year’s proposal of Rs 83,000 crore. However, there was a big slash by the third quarter of the current fiscal, because of which the department received only Rs 76,730 crore in 2022-23.

The National Health Mission (Rs 36,785 crore) outlay has been proposed to be less than what was allocated in last year’s budgetary estimate (Rs 37,160 crore), while the ministry’s flexi-pool allocations, used for core activities like strengthening mother and child health, and disease control would also be cut marginally.

The allocation for the Department for Health Research too has been cut – from Rs 3,200 crore in last year’s budgetary estimate to Rs 2,980 crore. But facilities available at Indian Council of Medical Research laboratories would be made available to public and private medical college faculty and private sector R&D teams with the underlying aim of encouraging collaborative research and innovation.

A gainer would be the Ayushman Bharat PMJAY programme – used for family medical insurance for the poor and marginalised sections of the society – as its allocation is to rise to Rs 7,200 crore from last year’s provision of Rs 6,457 crore.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also announced launching a mission to eliminate Sickle Cell Anaemia by 2047. The mission, among other things, will include universal screening of seven crore people in the age group of 0-40 years in affected tribal areas.

A new pharmaceutical research and innovation programme has been proposed without disclosing what would be the contour of such a programme.

Sitharaman also announced opening up 157 new nursing colleges, co-locating them with the same number of medical colleges that came into being since 2014 when the Narendra Modi-led government assumed power.

“The announcement on nursing colleges isn’t a big one as such steps should have been taken since 2014. Medical colleges traditionally do have nursing college attachments as they compliment each other”, Ishwar Gilada, secretary general, Organised Medicine Academic Guild, said, reacting to the budget. “It is unfortunate that we haven’t learnt lessons from the pandemic. We must invest highly in health to ensure India's continuous upward stride globally.”