GoI to increase Public Health Expenditure to 2.5% of GDP by 2025

On July 13, 2020, the 15^th Finance Commission held a meeting with the Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan. It was decided at the meet that India will increase its public health expenditure to 2.5% of GDP by 2025.

Highlights

Also, the Health Ministry has revised its requirement to around 6.04 lakh crores from 4.9 lakh crores in the view of COVID-19 pandemic. The Ministry has also demanded for additional resources in order to achieve National Health Policy.

National Health Policy, 2017

The policy was approved by the Union Cabinet in 2017 and it replaced the previous policy that was adopted in 2002. The policy aims to achieve universal access to good quality health. It proposes free drugs, emergency and essential health care services in public hospitals.

The policy advocates to allocate two-thirds of its resources to primary care. The policy also aims to introduce yoga to schools and offices. It will use AYUSH for preventive therapies.

Key Targets of the policy

The following are the key targets of the policy

• To increase life expectancy from 67.5 to 70 by 2025
• To reduce Fertility rate to 2.1 by 2019
• To reduce Infant Mortality Rate to 28 by 2019
• To reduce Under 5 Mortality Rate to 23 by 2025
• To reduce prevalence of blindness to 0.25 per 1000 persons by 2025.

Month: Current Affairs - July, 2020