Wednesday, May 28, 2014

our health minister

May 28 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)
HEALTH New doc in town promises health insurance for all Durgesh Nandan Jha
New Delhi:
TNN

Health insurance for all would be the top priority of the Modi government, said Dr Harsh Vardhan, who took charge as Union health minister on Tuesday. He met senior offi cials in the ministry and briefed them about the priorities of the new dispensation and sought suggestions to implement them.

Vardhan, who was sworn in on Monday, said he was not in favour of tax
payers' money being used to push a one-size-fits-all health policy . He hinted at involving both public and private sectors for optimum utilization of government schemes.

“The Rashtriya Swastha Bima Yojana of the labour ministry is working fine in some states but its reach is limited to the BPL families.
I plan to rope in all economic groups,“ he said.

Over the next few weeks, Vardhan, 59, is expected to hold a series of meetings with secretaries and senior officials of the various departments of the ministry to know the status of ongoing programmes and chart out future course of action.
He said he would push for e-governance systems in all government-to-citizens (G2C) and government to business (G2B) interfaces to weed out corruption.

“Accountability standards will be fi xed at the highest level and corruption will be checked at source with transparent systems,” he added.

The BJP leader blamed poor funding for the failure of the Reproductive and Child Health Project to reduce maternal mortality rate to 103 per 100,000 live births as envisaged under the Millennium Development Goal.

“Even Bangladesh is doing better than India,” Vardhan said. He added that National TB Control Programme and National Disease Control Programme too were under-funded.

Steps will be taken to revitalise these programmes, he said.

Vardhan, who trained as an ENT surgeon, has sought the views of public health professionals to set the agenda for the health ministry. “From this morning, I have started contacting public health practitioners to know their mind on what should be the road ahead,” he said. Vardhan requested the public to visit his website, drharshvardhan.com, to connect with him.

BJP’s choice for the chief minister’s offi ce in the last Delhi assembly election, Vardhan has been health minister in Delhi government. He pioneered the legislation to curb smoking by conceiving the Delhi Prohibition of Smoking and Non-Smoker’s Health Protection Bill and pioneered India’s Pulse Polio Programme in Delhi when he held the offi ce of the health minister during 1993-1998.

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