Real development in the Telangana’s health sector happened only in TRS rule: Harish Rao

Hyderabad: In the past seven decades, Telangana region had just three medical colleges while in seven years since statehood, the Telangana government established 33 medical colleges across the State, Health Minister, T Harish Rao said here on Thursday.

Responding to charges made by Telangana Congress working presidents, J Geetha Reddy and T Jayaprakash Reddy (Jagga Reddy) that TRS government did not fulfill its election promises of improving health sector, the Minister said the two Congress party leaders were perhaps living under a rock all these years even as Telangana made rapid strides in the health sector.

Harish Rao, who inspected the 50-bedded Community Health Centre (CHC) at Ameerpet with Animal Husbandry Minister, T. Srinivas Yadav, referred to the modern-government hospital that was established in Zaheerabad town, which comes under Sangareddy MLA, Jagga Reddy’s constituency.

“Have a look at your own Zaheerabad town where we have established a modern-government hospital. During the Congress-rule, you failed to establish such a high-end facility there. In 2014, Telangana had just 17,000 beds and since then, now we have 27,000 government hospital beds,” he said.

Healthcare sector in Telangana has undergone major transformation in the last seven years. During Congress rule, the Aarogyasri coverage for each family was Rs. 2 lakh, which was extended by TRS government to Rs. 5 lakh. Over 3.5 lakh family members benefitted from Aarogyasri and Telangana government spent nearly Rs 850 crore to sustain the health insurance scheme, Harish Rao said.

“In terms of development in healthcare sector, the NITI Aayog has ranked Telangana third in the country behind Tamil Nadu and Kerala. We have done wonders in reducing IMR and MMR. During Congress-rule, they never thought or planned to establish specialty hospitals in Telangana. Today, we are in the process of establishing four such facilities, which will increase speciality hospitals beds to 6000 in Hyderabad alone,” hd said.