Bhubaneswar: Union Health Minister J P Nadda said Saturday 22 new AIIMS are coming up across the country and admitted that there was a shortage of skilled human resource in the health sector.
He said ensuring the highest standards of medical education was a top priority for the government. “Twenty-two new AIIMS are coming up across the country under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Surakhya Yojana to reduce regional imbalance in the healthcare and tertiary fields,” Nadda said while addressing the convocation at the AIIMS.
Appreciating the scope of the Centre’s Ayushman Bharat health protection scheme in the presence of state Health Minister Pratap Jena and Bhubaneswar MP Prasanna Patsani (BJD), Nadda suggested that the state government opposed the Ayushman Bharat scheme which is one of the biggest health schemes in the world. The scheme will be able to benefit an unprecedented number of people in the country.
“The Ayushman Bharat programme aims to cover 50 crore people from the vulnerable sections. Under the programme comprehensive family coverage and effective referral linkages and National Health Protection Mission for financial protection to the poor have been incorporated. Its twin objectives will build a new India by 2022 to ensure universal coverage, enhanced productivity and well-being and avert wage losses.
The Mission is a paradigm shift from the sectoral, segmented and fragmented approach to service delivery in sync with various national and state health schemes. This will require a number of doctors for the service,” he said.
Admitting that there was a shortage of skilled human resources in the health sector at all levels, the health minister said the Centre has planned for a rapid expansion of medical education.
Nadda said as medical education forms the apex of the healthcare pyramid, it is the quality of graduating doctors and specialists that will determine the quality of services in the country for generations to come.
Many initiatives such as increasing the retirement age of doctors to 65 years, setting up of more medical and nursing schools, multi-skilling of doctors to overcome the shortage of specialists, have been taken by the Centre to improve medical education, he said.
To ensure better standards of medical education, the Centre has undertaken suitable amendments in the Graduate Medical Education Regulations and the Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations for making common counselling for admission in medical colleges mandatory, Nadda said.
Stone laid for AIIMS sub-centre at Balasore
Balasore: The long-cherished dream for a sub-centre of Bhubaneswar-AIIMS in Balasore seems to come true soon as Union Health Minister JP Nadda along with Union Oil, Natural Gas and Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan laid its foundation stone at Bamapada under Remuna block near NH-16 Saturday. Addressing a gathering here, the health Minister said, “The sub-centre of Bhubaneswar-AIIMs will add a golden chapter in the development of Balasore. Patients from North Odisha, West Bengal and Jharkhand will get quality healthcare at the AIIMS sub-centre.” He also assured that the AIIMS satellite centre would be completed in a phased manner.
PNN