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The Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh will launch the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in New Delhi tomorrow. The Mission aims to carry out necessary architectural corrections in the basic healthcare delivery systems especially in rural areas.
The goal of the Mission is to improve the availability and access to quality healthcare by people especially in rural areas and among them, the poor, the women and children.
The Mission will cover the entire country with special focus on 18 states where the challenge of strengthening poor public health systems and thereby improving key healthcare indicators is the greatest. The 18 states are Uttar Pradesh, Uttranchal, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram, Sikkim and Tripura.
The NRHM will include interventions for the urban poor under the urban component of Reproductive and Child Health Programme and National Disease Control Programme.
The core strategy of the NRHM will be on decentralized village and district level health planning and management, appointment of Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) to facilitate access to health services, strengthening the public health service delivery infrastructure, particularly at village, primary and secondary levels, mainstreaming AYUSH, improved management capacity to organize health systems and services in public health, emphasizing evidence based planning and implementation through improved capacity and infrastructure, promoting the non-profit sector to increase social participation and community empowerment, promoting healthy behaviours, and improving intersectoral convergence.
The NRHM is basically a strategy for integration of ongoing vertical programmes of Health and Family Welfare. NRHM subsumes key national programmes, viz. the Reproductive and Child Health II Project, (RCH-II), the National Disease Control Programme (NDCP) and the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP). NRHM will also enable the mainstreaming of Ayurvedic, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy Systems of Health (AYUSH).
As part of the consultation process, the Health and Family Welfare Ministry held discussions with stakeholders at state and district levels for finalization of the strategy of the Mission.
EK/MK.
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