With time ticking away and no fund available to kickstart its new health flagship scheme, National Urban Health Mission (NUHM), a wary UPA Government is now banking on foreign donors like World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) to meet the fund need for the programme.
The NUHM seeks to address healthcare challenges in town and cities with focus on urban poor. It was allocated just Rs 1 crore by the Finance Ministry in the recent budget against Rs 2,500 crore needed this fiscal. Sources in the Union Health Ministry said it is hoping to get around Rs 36,000 crore from external aid for the NUHM, which could not be rolled out as scheduled by June this year because of fund shortage.
As reported by The Pioneer recently, almost all the State Governments have submitted their individual plans for the scheme. However, the Government doesn’t want to be seen as the one delaying the scheme because of fund crisis. However, keen to make it a game-changer before the lok Sabha elections next year, the Ministry has approached the Department of Expenditure (DE) under the Finance Ministry to ensure fund to pave way for the NUHM.
Sources in the Ministry said that though talks are on with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, the DE is likely to get green signal for fund from the latter. “The DE has intimated that since loan limits from the World Bank has already exhausted so in most likelihood it would be the ADB that is going to chip in money for the project,” they said.
Once the fund is released, the Ministry has plans to implement the mission as pilot projects in a few selected States. “We are just waiting for the finalisation of fund from external aid. Once it is done we would selected the States where the scheme can be implemented,” the sources said. The scheme plans to cover all cities or towns with a population of more than 50,000 and aims to focus on primary health care needs of the urban poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged sections of the society like slum-dwellers and migrated labourers. It is intended to be implemented in 779 cities and towns with more than 50,000 population and cover about 7.75 crore people.