Preparing For Outbreaks

Context: The Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission aims to build a robust public health infrastructure.

About Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission (ABHIM)

• Launched with an outlay of Rs. 64,180 crores over a period of five years.
• Critical care hospital blocks in 12 central institutions such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and in government medical colleges and district hospitals in 602 districts.
• Establish integrated district public health labs in 730 districts to provide comprehensive laboratory services.
• An IT-enabled disease surveillance system: A network of surveillance labs will be developed at block, district, regional and national levels for detecting, investigating, preventing, and combating health emergencies and outbreaks.
  • 20 metropolitan surveillance units.
  • Five regional National Centre for Disease Control branches.
  • Integrated health promotion platform in all the States
• Expanding current health infrastructure: Services from existing urban primary health centres will be expanded to smaller units – Ayushman Bharat Urban Health and Wellness Centres and polyclinics or specialist clinics.

Significance of Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission (ABHIM)

• Strengthening public health institutions and governance capacities for wide-ranging diagnostics and treatment, including critical care services.
• Achieve Bio-security preparedness and pandemic research strengthening:
• Develop a core capacity to deliver the ‘one health’ approach to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks in humans and animals.
• State-of-the-art national digital health ecosystem for IT-enabled healthcare service delivery, for managing the core digital health data and for ensuring national portability in the provision of health services through a secure system of electronic health records.
• Expanding research on COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, including biomedical research to generate evidence to inform short-term and medium-term responses to such pandemics.