Centre asks states to send expenditure proposals for covid response package
Premium- States have been asked to send the proposals for funding under India covid-19 Emergency Response and Health Systems Preparedness Package: Phase II
NEW DELHI : Central government on Thursday asked states to send their expenditure proposals for approval and sanctioning of funds under the recently announced 'India covid-19 Emergency Response and Health Systems Preparedness Package: Phase II' of ₹23,123 crore.
Union health ministry was reviewing preparations under the package with health secretaries and senior officials of all states and Union territories (UTs) in a virtual meeting. During the review meeting, states and UTs were guided on policies and guidelines from the Union health ministry on different aspects of covid-19 management, which would help them strengthen their healthcare infrastructure to streamline covid-19 response.
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“States and UTs were advised to conduct a quick gap analysis for various infrastructure components under ECRP-II (emergency covid response package-II) including their IT infrastructure readiness. Procurement of drugs for effective covid-19 management is an essential component of ECRP-II; guidelines on procurement and buffer stocks have already been shared with the states, which may be adopted for this purpose. Guidance can be tweaked to local needs and states must come up with their own assessments based on stocks and costs involved," the Union health ministry said in a statement.
The Union cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the new scheme for FY22 on 8 July. This will be implemented from 1 July 2021 to 31 March 2022.
Phase-II of ECRP has central sector (CS) and centrally sponsored scheme (CSS) components. This scheme aims to accelerate health system preparedness for immediate responsiveness for early prevention, detection, and management with sharp focus on health infrastructure development, including paediatric care and with measurable outcomes. This will help strengthen decentralized public health actions and public health facilities in rural, peri-urban, and tribal areas, the government said.
The central government emphasized that there should be a focus on ramping up test, track, treat, and isolate strategy, requirement for scaling up testing capacity, additional beds, including for paediatric care, and makeshift hospitals at the sub-district level, ensuring availability of critical drugs, testing kits and PPEs. Further, to prevent the repeat of the second wave situation, the states were asked to focus on enhancing oxygen availability and strengthen home and village or community isolation centres, or covid care centres, sustaining and enhancing skilled medical and paramedical HR in line with the new guidelines issued by the Union health ministry in consultation with National Medical Commission (NMC) and Indian Nursing Council (INC).
The phase two of the package aims to support states to establish dedicated paediatric care units in all 736 districts of the country for responding to the needs of paediatric covid-19 management, support the states to establish paediatric centre of excellence in each state and UT (either in state medical colleges, state hospitals or central hospitals such as AIIMS) for providing tele-ICU services, mentoring and technical hand-holding to these District Paediatric units.
The relief package also aims to increase the availability of ICU beds, including 20% paediatric ICU beds as per evolving needs, support to states to have 1,050 liquid medical oxygen (LMO) storage tanks along with medical gas pipeline system (MGPS) (at least one per district) to augment the availability of medical oxygen in public healthcare system.
Other objectives of the package are to strengthen tele-consultation platform to provide up to 500,000 tele-consultation services per day, duly augmenting the availability of spokes and hubs, support the states in implementation of hospital management information system (HMIS) in all the district hospitals, duly strengthening the national architecture.
The government also said that it wants to increase access to ambulance services to eliminate delays in transport and referral of covid-19 patients, enhance testing capacity and corresponding supportive diagnostics at the public healthcare facilities, closer to the public in states.
It further aims to support states to utilize the UG and PG Interns, final year MBBS, BSc and GNM Nursing students for effective management.
The central government asked states that the hub and spoke model for tele-consultation services may be improved, including for the services at covid care centres, through district-level hubs. The final year MBBS students, UG interns and PG residents may be utilized under the supervision of the faculty as per the National Medical Commission guidelines for providing services of mild covid management through tele-consultation, and similarly, final year nursing students (BSc and GNM) may be utilized for full-time covid nursing duties at government facilities under the supervision of senior faculty as per the Indian Nursing Council guidelines and support of remuneration or incentives to these human resources for health under the ECRP-II may be leveraged by states effectively in the times of need.
All facilities in the district (covid or non-covid), health and wellness centres (HWCs), eSanjeevaniOPD, common service centres (CSCs) and other healthcare facilities such as sub-centres (SCs), primary health centres (PHCs), and community health centres (CHCs) are required to be connected with district hospitals, the Centre told states during the meeting.
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