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The seventeenth meeting of the National Advisory Council (NAC) was chaired by Smt. Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi today and was attended by ten members of the Council.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare made a presentation on the status of the National Rural Health Mission whose implementation has recently commenced. In this context, the NAC highlighted the following :- (i) The architecture of the Mission and its objectives should be clearly defined, especially in key areas such as universal health care, infrastructure improvements, risk-pooling systems and effectively integrated and locally accountable service delivery mechanisms and the requisite delegations and decentralization ensured, (ii) Time-bound quantifiable goals and specific road maps need to be determined, alongwith the health infrastructure linkages and adequate financial allocations. (iii) The Mission should strengthen a community-based Public Health System and move towards a National Health Service of acceptable standards with universal coverage.
In regard to the HIV/AIDS Control Programme for which the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) was set up in 1992 to function in Mission Mode, the NAC emphasized : (i) Streamlining of data collection and collation, as also regular random sampling to ensure more effective interventions. (ii) Development of capacities at the grassroots level (and integration with the Public Health Delivery system) are critical. (iii) It is necessary to reach out to the vulnerable sections, including sex-workers and drug users. (iv) A central feature of the HIV/AIDS Control Programme should be 100% use of condoms towards which a re-strategized Programme can be directed, with sharp focus on the deliverable goals and full coverage of the vulnerable population.
A presentation entitled “Energy Policy, 2005” was made in the general background of the rising international oil prices. The discussions on this subject will continue. The next Meeting of the Council was scheduled for October 29, 2005.
YSR/DS/CS
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