When the National Urban Health Mission is rolled out in the State, the National Rural Health Mission will get integrated with it and the new entity will be called National Health Mission.
The Urban Mission will be launched in about a month in all the five corporations and selected ten municipalities in the State besides the district centres.
The framework for the integration is being readied, M. Beena, director of NRHM told The Hindu . The integration of both the Missions will amalgamate health projects under the two missions. This will help the State as the Union Government funding would come into an integrated system, she said.
Not only would it help fund flow and administration, the integration would help in planning also, said Dr. Beena.
The compartmentalised planning under different heads didn’t provide much room for a better planning structure, she said. This would avoid duplication and bring in more clarity in the implementation, she said.
Funding for health will be coming in under diverse labels like NRHM, NUHM, Non-Communicable Diseases. The integration would be much helpful in the State as the urban-rural divide is missing here, said an NRHM official.
There would be funds for infrastructure building and maintenance under both missions. For mobilising human resources and various activities that NRHM and now the NUHM would be involved in, like school health programme, adolescent health programme, family planning, maternal health, child health and others require similar funding. The Health Missions will be doing similar work in under different heads, so the integration made sense, said an employee at NRHM.
Like the Rural Mission, where it supplements the Health Services in its various functions, the Urban Mission will support the local bodies by energising their schemes in providing better health amenities, said Dr. Beena.
