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.