Prime Minister Launches National Rural Health Mission

This press release from the Government of India's Press Information Bureau describes the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh's pursuit of launching a monitoring system for health that is accountable at the community level. This article describes his views which were shared as part of a keynote address at the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in April.

The Prime Minister proclaimed that the government "failed to address the issue of comprehensive healthcare and had 'abandoned this approach and public healthcare for specified diseases..." Further, he stated that there's been “inadequate attention to public health issues and social and preventive medicine.” According to the article, the Prime Minister intends to redress these issues by seeking to improve the availability of and access to quality healthcare by people, especially for women and children in poor rural areas. The NRHM is described as offering effective healthcare with special focus on 18 of India's states. The press release describes one large change which would seek to increase the outreach of the health system to village and even household levels through the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA).

Under the Prime Minister's new plan, the press release describes one of the key components as having every village with a female Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) chosen by and accountable to the Panchayat, whose role, in part, would be to act as the interface between the community and the public health system. Further this individual iwould be "an honorary volunteer, receiving performance based compensation for promoting universal immunisation, as well as working on other healthcare delivery programmes."

The press release notes that States will be free to choose State specific models and village health plans will be prepared through a local team headed by the Health & Sanitation Committee of the Panchayat. Further, the article describes rural hospitals as strengthened by becoming accountable to the community through Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS), and needing to show measurable results.