Rs 3,000 crore to spruce up government health system

KOLKATA: After proposing a regulatory body to keep tabs on private health facilities, chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday turned the focus on the government healthcare system, raising the plan budget from Rs 2,999.22 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 3,299 crore, as a first step to augment the infrastructure.

The Rs 300-crore raise seems to be in sync with the steady increase in budgetary allocation since 2011-12, when the plan budget was merely Rs 871.87 crore.

The major focus was decentralization of the health sector, said minister of state for health and family welfare Shashi Panja, who tabled the budget. “A total of 42 multi- and super-speciality hospitals, each with 300-500 beds, are being built in 15 districts at a cost of Rs 2,714 crore. Besides, 33 critical care units (CCU) and 21 high-dependency units (HDU) are already functional in tertiary and secondary hospitals. Fourteen more such CCUs and HDUs will operate by 2017-’18,” she said.

With a rise in demand for specialists, the government introduced Diplomate of National Board (DNB) courses under the post-graduation programme in 10 district hospitals, covering five disciplines; as a result, 80 new seats have been created. “The course will help us overcome the shortage of specialist doctors. The initiative has already earned appreciation from the Centre,” she said, adding the superannuation age of medical officers had also been raised from 62 to 65 years to tide over the shortage.

Eight health districts have been created at Nandigram, Jhargram, Bishnupur, Rampurhat, Diamond Harbour, Bashirhat, Asansol and Kalimpong to streamline the functioning of the district health administration. “We have added 27,000 beds in the new and existing government hospitals together. To cater to the pressure, 4,544 doctors, 6,535 nurses, 833 pharmacist and 1,001 technicians have been added to the existing medical and para-medical force of the state,” Panja said.