The State is facing a huge cut in the health budget allocation under the National Health Mission (NHM) this year and may have to find money from its own coffers for carrying on with many public health programmes
“Our NHM allocation this year is down by Rs.100 crore. Though we had submitted a Programme Implementation Plan (PIP) to the tune of Rs.633.02 crore with a projected increase of 25 per cent over last year’s resource envelope, the approved PIP for 2015-16 is only for Rs.409 crore. In 2014-15, our allocation was Rs.509 crore,” a senior NHM official said.
Though a supplementary PIP, which is to be submitted soon, may bring in some more funds, it is quite obvious that the State will have to find more funds for public health spending this year.
“With the 14th Finance Commission hiking the State share in Central taxes from 32 to 42 per cent, the States are expected to have more funds and greater autonomy in financing and designing development schemes. Hence, we have been anticipating a cut in the NHM allocation,” he said.
State health planners, however, are clinging on to the optimism that health being a priority sector, the government will compensate the NHM the shortfall in funds. “We will go ahead with the public health programmes as planned,” an official said.
However, unfortunately, the State has even less money now to spend on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which has emerged as a major public health priority in recent years.
Kerala had recently presented a major proposal before the Ministry seeking scaling up of the National Programme for the Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular diseases, and Stroke (NPCDCS) from five to all 14 districts in the State, with an increased accent on secondary-level care of NCDs.
In fact, Kerala had been hoping for an increased allocation, of over Rs.30 crore under the NHM for augmenting NCD control activities.
Strange enough, the State’s proposal for scaling up the NPCDCS has been approved in the NHM PIP for 2015-16. But the funds allocated for the programme is just Rs.9 crore, which is even less than last year’s allocation of Rs.11 crore.
It is pointed out that the Centre has cut the allocation for the NHM across India by approximately Rs.6,000 crore this year.
