launched with much fanfare in 2013, the much-awaited National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) is yet to take off, mainly because of the apathy of the States to implement the Central health scheme, aiming to ensure better health of the urban poor.
Health Secretary CK Mishra admitted that the States were moving at a snail’s pace, taking their own time to recruit staff, infrastructure and in chalking out contours to implement the NUHM, an urban counterpart of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), under the National Health Mission.
launched by the previous UPA Government, the NUHM aims at providing primary healthcare to the poor in cities and towns with a population of over 50,000 as it was felt that the urban poor were not having access to the quality health system.
Sources said that approvals for carrying out various activities under the NUHM have been conveyed to the States for the last two years and this year too, `2578 crore has already been released to 35 States and the UTs so far.
“But while some States have been able to work out effective implementation mechanisms by coordination between their urban development and health departments, it has been, however, observed in the reviews visits and common review missions that the progress with regard to the approved activities has not been very satisfactory,” said the sources.
They said that the States implementing the NUHM particularly through the urban local bodies (UlBs) are experiencing limitations with regard to low priority being accorded to the urban health programme by some of the UlBs.
“Also, lack of coordination and cooperation between the UlBs and the State health departments, very slow human resources recruitment process by the UlBs, and low reporting of expenditure by the UlBs is hampering the pace of the scheme.”
“In 2013-14, just `1 crore was kept in the budget to roll out the scheme. No work on the ground has been done in 2014-15. In 2015-16 too, `158.12 crore was released to eight States. In fact till March 31, 2015, less than 25 per cent of available funds could be utilised under NUHM,” said the sources. A total `950 crore has been allocated for the scheme for 2016-17 but sources in the Ministry did not rule out underutilisation of the fund yet again.