Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Friday announced the creation of a corpus fund with an initial sum of Rs. 10 crore to provide post-transplant immunosuppressant therapy to those who undergo liver and kidney transplantation. This will be covered under the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister's Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme.
The corpus fund will also cover bone marrow transplantation, cochlear transplantation and stem cell transplantation as the costs of such treatments are much higher than the Rs 1.50 lakh ceiling stipulated under the CMCHIS.
“Moreover, every year Rs 20 crore will be allotted to the corpus fund from the insurance scheme fund to the government hospitals,” the Chief Minister said while making a suo motu statement in the Assembly.
Ms Jayalalithaa said the Insurance Scheme covered 1,016 types of treatments, 23 types of medical tests and 113 continuous medical treatments. The beneficiaries can avail themselves of up to Rs. 1 lakh for treatment and in the case of 77 diseases, the treatment cost has been fixed at Rs 1.50 lakh.
The Chief Minister also unveiled a scheme to provide free laptops to village health nurses as they were depending on private browsing centres and primary health centres to register the details of pregnant women, children and mothers who were covered by the Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy Maternity Maternity Assistance Scheme.
“This will save a lot of time and improve their efficiency of work. The free laptop scheme project will cost Rs 21.11 core,” she said.
Yet another health scheme announced by the Chief Minister was appointment of Multipurpose Hospital Workers for government hospitals, district headquarters hospitals, taluk hospitals, medical offices and primary health centres. These workers, she said, would take care of maintenance of hospital premises, improve the sanitation, cleaning and protection of the environment of hospitals.
In the case of hospitals with less than 200 beds, health and sanitary workers will be appointed based on the consolidated pay fixed by the district collectors. The contract period is for a year and can be extended up to five years. A total of 4.000 workers will be appointed under this method.
For the hospitals with more than 200 beds, health and sanitary workers would be outsourced.
The vacancies of nursing assistant-grade 2 will be filled by providing adequate training to hospital employees.
The Chief Minister said security of hospitals would be further improved and 2,176 security guards would be outsourced for the purpose. In major hospitals, 776 security guards would be appointed on the basis of eight hour work. This will be done through outsourcing.
Hospitals with more than 200 beds will get a total of 1,400 security guards for Intensive Care Units (ICUs), Emergency Wards, Maternity Wards and Neonatal Care. This will also be done through outsourcing and the government will allot Rs 20 crore.
Ms Jayalalitha said maintenance of hospital buildings including drainage facility, drinking water supply and electrical works would be taken up at a cost of Rs 15 crore. She also announced Rs 10 crore for replacing old furniture in medical college hospitals and another Rs 20 crore for medical equipments and medicines to ensure smooth functioning of hospitals.
The Chief Minister said Rs 10 crore would be allotted to purchase medicines, life saving drugs and costly medicines in addition to the Rs 284 crore already sanctioned.
