Centre for increased budgetary allocation for public health

The Centre has called for a hike in budgetary allocation to Union Health and Family Welfare ministry in the 11th five year plan to increase spending on its ambitious public health plans.
"We are confident that we will be allocated a sum of about Rs 1.36 lakh crore, as against Rs 45,000 crore in the Tenth Five Year Plan," Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss told reporters on the sidelines of a Strabismology conference- 'Synergy 07' at Chennai on Saturday.

An amount of Rs 1,500 crore would be earmarked for the National Blindness Control Programme under the Plan, he said.

Ramadoss said that India would achieve the targetted .3 per cent prevalence of blindness by the year 2015.

"When the National Blindness Control Programme was started some 20 years back, the prevalence rate was 1.4 per cent, which has now come down to 1 per cent," he said.

Asked about future health programmes, he said the Centre would introduce the National School Health Programme, where every school-going child would be provided a 'smart card.'

"The child will be screened annually for health problems relating to vision, hearing, heart, diabetes and anaemia, among others, the information of which will be updated in the smart card," he said, adding the programme would be a Public-Private Partnership model.

The Centre last year had trained two lakh teachers in the country on identifying eye-defects in children, he said.

On the controversial Compulsory Rural Postings scheme for medicos, he said that any decision would be taken only after the Sambasiva Rao Committee, which is taking opinions of stakeholders, submitted its report.

The committee is expected to submit the report by December end.

Govt to set up body to regulate medical courses

The Government is considering setting up a unified body for regulating post-graduate medical courses in the country, Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said on Friday.

Replying to supplementaries during Question Hour in Rajya Sabha, he said while Medical Council of India was responsible for under-graduate medical courses in the country, post-graduate courses are conducted by National Board of Examination and MCI.The MCI regulated post-graduate education has not been recognised in many countries while National Board of Education courses are widely accepted including in Middle-East and UK.To harmonise these, Dr Ranjid Roy Choudhary committee was constituted which has suggested a unified body for conducting post-graduate medical courses.

"We have not yet taken any view," he said.
Ramadoss, said with two-third of medical colleges in the country being concentrated in six states including Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra, the Government is planning to change regulations to allow government hospitals to start medical colleges.
Uttar Pradesh has only 16 medical colleges while Bihar and Madhya Pradesh have just eight each.

"There is a big lacuna for which we are going to change the regulations," he said.
The Minister said of the 700,000 modern system doctors in the country, only 10 percent are serving in rural areas.
On vacancies in MCI, he said on High Court direction, 110 out of 130 vacandies of members of MCI have been filled up.