Telangana: Landmark year for healthcare

Focus was on strengthening public health, creating superspecialty services, and medical education

Hyderabad: It would not be an exaggeration to say that 2022 was a landmark year for the government-run healthcare sector in Telangana. The year started under the dark clouds of the Covid third wave driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 but concluded on an optimistic note with Telangana’s public health sector firmly establishing itself as the country’s top performer.

The Omicron variant dominated and kept Government healthcare establishments occupied between December 2021 and March 2022. In April, the Telangana government started rolling-out sweeping measures in the public healthcare sector, which potentially will have a significant influence on how the sector will perform in the next decade.

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The focus was on strengthening all three levels of public health including primary, secondary, and tertiary levels, and also creating an entirely new level i.e. superspecialty services. As part of these efforts, the first big-ticket expenditure of the Telangana government in 2022 was the decision to sanction a staggering Rs 2,679 crore to establish four superspecialty hospitals — Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences (TIMS) — at four corners of Hyderabad.

While funds were being sanctioned and released for the creation of new medical infrastructure and hospitals in Hyderabad and elsewhere in the districts, the State government also decided to strengthen human resources in the public healthcare sector. Overall, the focus of the State government since April 2022 was to take up phase-wise notification for the permanent recruitment of 13,000 posts at various levels in the State health sector.

Focus on medical education

It was not just health care services in government hospitals that were the sole focus of the State government, as it implemented another major and prestigious initiative of strengthening medical education by recruiting faculty and expanding the pool of MBBS medical seats for deserving students.
In the last 12 months, the Telangana government spent a staggering Rs 6,669 crore towards the development of specialty healthcare facilities in district hospitals, establishing 16 medical colleges and a superspecialty Warangal health city.

By this year’s Dasara festival, for the first time in the country, in just one day, eight new government medical colleges in Sangareddy, Mahabubabad, Mancherial, Jagtial, Wanaparthy, Kothagudem, Nagarkurnool, and Ramagundam were inaugurated. The State government incurred an expenditure of Rs 4,080 crore to develop the medical colleges, which needless to say, added 1,200 medical seats this academic year.