Major overhaul for health sector in Telangana

Health Minister Eatala Rajender said the government would not hesitate to spend up to Rs 2,000 crore while implementing the recommendations.

Hyderabad: The State government will take up a major revamp across all the sectors of Health, Medical and Family Welfare, aimed at strengthening the foundations that would withstand the demand for quality health care in the coming decades.

The cabinet sub-committee set up by Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao on Thursday has come out with recommendations for a major overhaul of the Health Department. Health Minister Eatala Rajender said the government would not hesitate to spend up to Rs 2,000 crore while implementing the recommendations.

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“The sub-committee recommendations are aimed at launching systemic reforms in the health sector and address the root cause of major difficulties in the system. During the ongoing Covid-19 epidemic, the challenges that public health sector across the world had to face, prompted the Chief Minister to direct us to come up with a framework for complete revamp of the department. The government is ready to spend up to Rs 2,000 crore towards this initiative,” he said while interacting with presspersons on Thursday.

The recommendations cover a wide gamut of reforms including in Aarogyasri, CMRF, recruitments every six months, organ transplantation at government facilities and revision of salaries for ASHA workers and outsourcing workers.

To hammer out the final recommendations, the cabinet sub-committee, comprising senior Cabinet Ministers including Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban development K T Rama Rao, Animal Husbandry Minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav, Panchayat Raj Minister Errabelli Dayakar Rao, and senior health officials met here on Thursday.

The meeting featured exhaustive discussions on all bottlenecks across various departments in the health sector. “The bottomline is that general public, specially the poor, in the State must have a quality health care alternative to private hospitals. The services at government hospitals must be on par with private health care facilities,” Rajender said.

He said in the last few years, a series of measures aimed at improving mother and child care through KCR Kits and direct benefit scheme led to significant improvements in vital health parameters. “Before Statehood, the maternal mortality rate in Telangana was 92, which has now come down to 63. The Infant Mortality Rate was nearly 40 that dropped to 26. The gains that we made in the last five to six years must not be lost and for that, revamping health department is vital,” Rajender added.

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