Health department gets ₹11,468 cr

Hyderabad : With the aim of providing timely, effective and quality health services to all people, the State government has allocated Rs 11,468 crore for the Medical and Health department.

The Deputy Chief Minister said that the current medical system was not adequate to meet the needs of the people and the sector has largely been neglected. The previous government could not even pay timely salaries to doctors, nurses and other government and contractual employees. Even the prestigious Osmania Hospital has been completely neglected. Besides bragging that they succeeded in getting new medical colleges, they have not provided any amenities, necessary resources and facilities to these colleges, said the Deputy Chief Minister.

“Our government has released all the salary arrears to all employees. In future too, we assure them timely salary payments, so that the system works smoothly and effectively. We will also ensure completion of under construction super specialty hospitals, other hospitals, nursing colleges and medical colleges. We have sanctioned the necessary teaching and non-teaching staff for the new medical colleges. As soon as our government was formed, we gave appointment orders to 6,956 nurses,” said Vikramarka.

The Finance Minister said that with the aim of providing timely, effective and quality health services to all the people, the Telangana government had taken special measures while formulating Universal Health Care policy. The government has strengthened the Rajiv Aarogyasri Yojana introduced by the previous Congress government. Government increased the coverage from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh. Apart from this, government increased package prices of 1,375 treatments (out of the 1672 treatments) by an average of 20 per cent and also expanded the scope of Aarogyasri scheme by including 163 new diseases.

To make health services accessible to all citizens through modern technology, the government was introducing a system of issuing a digital health profile card to everyone with a unique identification number. This new digital approach initiated by the government would make a citizen's health information available at one place. With this, the diagnosis can be made easily, and treatment can be started promptly, he opined. Dental, eye, ENT, mental health care and related examinations would be made available to the public in a phased manner, he added.