India's health expenditure to witness three-fold increase
New Delhi: The government of India will enhance spending on health up to three times in the 12th Five Year Plan and will also set up more medical and nursing colleges at locations where they are needed in order to overcome the shortage of trained human resources in the sector. This was stated by the Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, on November 03, 2012 while laying the foundation stone laying at the Lady Hardinge Medical College project at New Delhi.
The Prime Minister also mentioned that health indicators reflected a country's overall well-being. "Recognizing the need to provide for the complex challenges in the health sector, the allocation for health has been enhanced three times in the 12th Plan as compared with the 11th Plan allocation," Dr Singh added.
He said that the government was focusing on medical education. In the last three years, the number of MBBS seats in medical colleges increased by over 30 percent and the seats for post graduate programmes by 51 percent. "However, the availability of trained human resources remains a challenge. We need to set up more nursing and medical colleges to increase both undergraduate and postgraduate seats in the 12th Plan," he said.
The Prime Minister said that nutrition, drinking water, sanitation, housing and education, particularly of the girl child, were increasingly being underlined as the social determinants of health. He added that generic drugs would be made available free in all public hospitals across the country to help the poor reduce their out of pocket expenditure on health.
