Strengthening Healthcare

Context: The Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission (ABHIM) aims to fix the weaknesses in India’s health system.

Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission (ABHIM)

• Objectives: Strengthening of urban and rural primary care, stronger surveillance systems and laboratory capacity as well as creation of critical care capacity at different levels of health system.
• Health infrastructure development: With support for 17,788 rural health and wellness centres (HWCs) in seven high-focus States and three north-eastern States.
  • 11,044 urban HWCs will be established in close collaboration with Urban Local Bodies.
• Comprehensive capacity building and emergency preparedness: Network of centres will build a trained public health workforce that can perform routine public health functions while effectively responding to a public health emergency.
• Critical care hospital blocks, with 50-100 beds, will be established in 602 districts, to enable care for those with serious infectious diseases without disrupting other services.
• For enhancing the level of disaster response readiness, 15 health emergency operation centres and two container-based mobile hospitals will be created.
• Universalisation of primary healthcare: Various measures of this scheme will extend primary healthcare services across India.
• Expansion of healthcare services: Areas like hypertension, diabetes and mental health will be covered, in addition to existing services.
• Information technology-enabled disease surveillance system: With support for 3,382 block public health units (BPHUs) in 11 high-focus States and establishment of integrated district public health laboratories in all 730 districts.
  • The hub-and-spoke model of block, district, regional and national public health laboratories will enable effective microbial surveillance.
  • A National Platform for One Health to be established.
  • Four Regional National Institutes of Virology will be established.
  • Laboratory capacity under the National Centre for Disease Control, the Indian Council of Medical Research and national research institutions will be strengthened.
  • Fifteen bio-safety level III labs to augment capacity for infectious disease control and bio-security.
• Towards continuum of care at different levels: HWCs will be linked with Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, for all entitled beneficiaries.
• Private sector participation in service delivery may be invited by States, as per need and availability.

Way forward

• Train and deploy a larger and better skilled health workforce: Upgraded district hospitals offer the best opportunity for creating new training centres.
  • Scale up institutional capacity for training public health professionals.
• Leverage public health expertise: In programme design, delivery, implementation and monitoring in many sectors that impact health.
• Timely financing and effective implementation: For augmenting capacity in several areas and creating a framework for coordinated functioning at district, state and national levels.
• Change of bureaucratic mindsets: Enabling the data-driven decentralised decision-making and people-partnered primary care at block level while strengthening national connectivity for delivering universal healthcare.
• A cultural shift in Centre-State relations: As many independently functioning programmes will have to work with a common purpose by leaping across boundaries of separate budget lines and reporting structures.
• Citizen-centric: The platforms shall offer space for active citizen engagement.