Health Minister J P Nadda has said the centre will sign MoUs with maximum states on 14th of this month in New Delhi to implement its government's ambitious scheme Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Swasthya Suraksha Mission under Ayushman Bharat.

The scheme aims to provide five lakh rupees annual health cover per family to ten crore poor families. A beneficiary will be allowed to take cashless benefits from any public and private empnelled hospitals. Briefing reporters in New Delhi over the four years achievement of the Ministry, Mr Nadda said, so far MoUs with eight states have been inked and MoUs with 12 states are under process.

The Minister said, the second component of Ayushman Bharat is to establish 1.5 lakh health and wellness centres by 2022. Under it, sub-centres and primary health centres will transformed into health and wellness centres to provide comprehensive primary health services. The Health Minister said 19 thousand such centres have been approved this year.

Mr Nadda said, Maternal Mortality Ratio, MMR has declined from 167 points in 2011-13 to 130 in 2014-16 showing a reduction by 37 points. He said, with this, India has registered a record 22 percent reduction in MMR since 2013. He said, ten states of the country have already achieved the Millennium Development Goal targets for MMR and this is a major achievement towards saving precious lives of the mothers. He said, with the combined efforts of Ministry and all the health workers, government have managed to avert one thousand maternal deaths per month.

The Minister said, under Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis program, more than two lakh 38 thousand patients have been benefitted. He said, under the Universal Immunization Programme, vaccines are available free of cost at all government health facilities. He said, every round of the programme is making children in the country safer from vaccine-preventable diseases. The Minister said, under the programme, the basket of vaccines have been increased from 7 to 12, to reduce the burden of diseases in the future.