Health & Hospitals, being a State subject, primary responsibility to strengthen public health infrastructure, lies with the respective State Government. The Central Government, however, provides technical and financial support to States under National Health Mission (NHM) for improving health care systems, based on their proposals subject to availability of resources.

Under the Ayushman Bharat initiative, the Government is committed to setting up of 1.5 lakhs Health & Wellness Centers (HWCs), across the country by December, 2022. Sufficient resources have been provided to the States for the creation of the same and as many as 57,017 HWCs have become functional so far, taking primary healthcare services to the community.

The PM Atma Nirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana has been announced for developing capacities of primary, secondary and tertiary care health systems, strengthen existing national institutions, and create new institutions, to cater to detection and cure of new and emerging diseases. This will be in addition to the National Health Mission. The main interventions under the scheme are:

1. 1. Support for 17,788 rural and 11,024 urban Health and Wellness Centres;
   2. Setting up integrated public health labs in all districts and 3382 block public health units in 11 States;
   3. Establishing critical care hospital blocks in 602 districts and 12 central institutions;
   4. Strengthening of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), its 5 regional branches and 20 metropolitan health surveillance units;
   5. Expansion of the Integrated Health Information Portal to all States/UTs to connect all public health labs;
   6. Operationalisation of 17 new Public Health Units and strengthening of 33 existing Public Health Units at Points of Entry, that is at 32 Airports, 11 Seaports and 7 land crossings;
   7. Setting up of 15 Health Emergency Operation Centres and 2 mobile hospitals; and
   8. Setting up of a national institution for One Health, a Regional Research Platform for WHO South East Asia Region, 9 Bio-Safety Level III laboratories and 4 regional National Institutes for Virology.

20% of funds under the NHM are placed in an incentive pool. Incentives are provided to States on achievement of priority indicators including on increase in States’ budgetary expenditure on health.

The Minister of State (Health and Family Welfare), Sh. Ashwini Kumar Choubey stated this in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha here today.

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MV/SJ