The State Government has initiated the process of filling up vacant posts in different wings of the Health Department even as a proposal for providing incentives to the State-run hospitals for enhancing institutional deliveries is under active consideration.
Health Minister C. Laxma Reddy informed the Legislative Assembly on Friday that the government had sanctioned over 10,000 posts in the Health Department including 4,000 posts in the Vaidya Vidhana Parishad to ensure effective healthcare services to the people.
Mortality rates
Replying to short discussion on the KCR Kits he said the Government had decided to provide ₹2,000 as incentive for every delivery registered at the State run hospitals of which ₹1,000 would go for the hospital development and ₹500 each for doctors and the staff. The State had succeeded in ensuring that the infant mortality rate was brought down from 39 to 28 and maternal mortality rate from 90 to 70 in the last three years.
“The successful implementation of KCR kits scheme will ensure that the IMR and MMR in the State are on par with State like Kerala which had lowest rates,” he said. It was decided to add 200 more vehicles to the existing fleet of Amma Vodi ambulances and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao would flag off these vehicles within a week. On the KCR kits, he said the incentive for pregnant mothers had been designed to ensure that immunisation and other aspects were taken care of through the scheme while the Government had initiated the process for strengthening the infrastructure in the hospitals for which necessary allocations would be made soon.
Congress member J. Geetha Reddy charged the Government with neglecting the infrastructure aspect in spite of launching ambitious schemes like KCR Kits. She alleged that the amounts that were being spent on various mother and child schemes had contribution from the Centre. “A majority of these schemes are launched by the then UPA Government and the NDA Government is implementing them with change in names,” she said.
Referring to the Government’s claims that institutional deliveries had increased by 20%, she sought to know whether the Government machinery was geared up to meet the demand as it was faced with shortage of staff as well as absence of infrastructure. BJP’s N.V.S.S. Prabhakar questioned the Government’s rationale in not making a mention of the Central assistance in the publicity campaign about the health schemes at a time when the BJP-led government had earmarked significant amount of funds.
Dr. Laxma Reddy said though a scheme on the lines of KCR Kits had been announced by the Centre, the guidelines for utilisation of funds were not issued yet. “The entire budget of ₹600 crore is being borne by the State,” he said.
