PATNA: Experts and common people expect special attention to health sector in the
Union Budget to be presented by finance minister
Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday. The
Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the need of strengthening the health infrastructure in the country.
Both state
IMA as well as the Indian Doctors for Peace and Development (IDPD) demanded increase in the
health budget this time. State IMA senior vice-president Dr
Ajay Kumar said spending on the health sector should be at least 2.5% of the
GDP this year and needs to be raised up to 5% by 2024. “IMA also expects that modern medicine should get a proper place in the Budget. It played an important role in fighting the Covid-19 and now two vaccines have also come. We are against ‘mixopathy’,” said Dr Ajay.
The IDPD, in a press statement, demanded three times increase in the health budget. “IDPD notes with concern the growing inequities in healthcare to our population. This has become more evident after the Covid-19 pandemic and has exposed the lack of government preparedness to deal with such situations,” reads the joint statement by its president Dr SS Soodan, senior vice-president Dr Arun Mitra and general secretary Dr Shakeel Ur Rahman.
IDPD members pointed out the loopholes in outsourcing and roping in private players in the field by giving them subsidy, saying it degraded the country’s capacity to deal with the pandemic. They further stated that the
National Health Policy 2017 had committed to raising public health spending to 2.5% of the GDP, but it was still hovering around 1.2% of the GDP.
Safdar Ali, working in the field for more than a decade, said the government
Budget should emphasize on the need of improving health infrastructure and allocate sufficient funds to fulfil the need of manpower. “From sub-centre level in villages to district hospitals, there should be all possible equipment, trained doctors and paramedics so that people need not move to bigger health institutes,” he said.