Healthcare Budget 2024: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced the interim budget 2024. While presenting the budget, the Finance Minister said that India overcame challenges of Covid-19 and created foundations for self-reliant India.
Here are the key takeaways from interim budget 2024 for healthcare sector:
- The government will encourage the vaccination against cervical cancer of girls in the age group of 9-14 years for the prevention of the disease.
- The health cover under the Ayushman Bharat scheme will be extended to all ASHA and Anganwadi workers and helpers.
- The government plans to set up more medical colleges by utilising the existing hospital infrastructure under various departments. A committee for this purpose will be set up to examine the issues and make relevant recommendations.
- All maternal and child healthcare schemes will be brought under one comprehensive programme for synergy in implementation.
- Upgradation of Anganwadi centres under ‘Saksham Anganwadi’ and Poshan 2.0 will be expedited to improve nutrition delivery, early childhood care, and development.
- The newly designed ‘U-Win’ platform for managing immunisation and intensification of Mission Indradhanush will be rolled expeditiously throughout the country.
In Union Budget 2023, the Finance Minister announced that new nursing colleges will be established, co-located with 157 recently established medical colleges. Sitharaman had also announced a mission to eliminate sickle cell anaemia by 2047 and it will involve screening of seven crore people.
During the budget presentation, she also announced that facilities in select ICMR Labs will be made available for research by public and private medical college faculty and the private sector.
In FY2023-24, the expenditure of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare was estimated to be Rs 89,155 crore, a 13 percent increase from revised estimates for 2022-23. The National Health Mission is its largest component, accounting for 33 percent of the Ministry’s budget, and medical colleges and hospitals account for 27 percent of the budget. It is noteworthy that high out-of-pocket expenditures and a shortage of healthcare personnel remained major issues.
In FY2023-24, the government had proposed to spend Rs 45,03,097 crore in 2023-24, which was an increase of 7.5 percent over the revised estimate of 2022-23. In 2022-23, total expenditure is estimated to be 6.1 percent higher than the budget estimate.