An Overview of the Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission

The PM Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission is a pan-India initiative aimed at developing and enhancing the long-term public healthcare infrastructure in the country.

• The mission has been allocated a budget of Rs 64,180 crore for the fiscal years 2021-22 to 2025-26 by the government.
• It complements the National Health Mission and aims to fill the existing gaps in public health infrastructure across urban and rural India, with a particular focus on critical care and primary care facilities.
• The mission was inaugurated in Varanasi and will be rolled out across all districts in India.
• An important goal of this scheme is to equip India to effectively handle future pandemics and health emergencies.
• The mission will support 17,788 rural health and wellness centres in ten high-focus states.
• It also envisions the establishment of 11,024 urban health and wellness centres across the country.
• Under this scheme, 134 types of tests will be offered free of charge at the district level.

Key Objectives of the Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission

The mission is driven by the following objectives:

1. To build a robust public health infrastructure in both urban and rural areas that can effectively respond to public health emergencies or disease outbreaks.
2. To establish an IT-enabled disease surveillance system encompassing a network of surveillance laboratories at block, district, regional and national levels.

Components of the Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission

The mission comprises three main components which are discussed in this section.

Component 1: Comprehensive Surveillance of Infectious Diseases

• This component involves the establishment of Integrated Public Health laboratories in all the 730 districts of the country.
• Five regional branches and 20 metropolitan units of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) will be set up at the state level.
• At the national level, an Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP) will be established.

Component 2: Creation of Comprehensive Diagnostics and Treatment Facilities

• District level interventions include the establishment of new health and wellness centres in both rural and urban areas and the initiation of critical care hospital blocks in every district with a population of over 5 lakh.
• At the state level, 15 health emergency operation centres will be established.
• National level interventions include the setting up of two mobile hospitals based on container technology and critical care hospital blocks in 12 Government of India hospitals, which will also serve as mentor institutions for training and capacity building.
  • The mobile hospitals, each with a capacity of about 100 beds, will be located in Chennai and Delhi and can be airlifted or transported by train to the site of an emergency.

Component 3: Comprehensive Pandemic Research

• At the district level, the existing 80 viral diagnostics and research labs will be strengthened.
• State-level interventions include the operationalisation of 15 new bio-safety level III laboratories.
• National level interventions include the establishment of 4 new regional national institutes for virology and a regional research platform (digital) for WHO southeast Asia Region.

Conclusion

The PM Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission holds immense significance in a country like India where the healthcare system requires significant expansion and improvement. The provision of accessible and affordable healthcare is currently skewed, often to the disadvantage of the marginalized sections of society. Therefore, this mission can potentially revolutionize the healthcare sector by ensuring quality healthcare services for all.