The Centre has decided to establish a national paramedical institute of excellence in New Delhi and eight regional institutes to meet the demand for human resource, Health Minister said on Friday.
The regional institutes would come up at the rate of one for three States. One of them would be established in Coimbatore to serve Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, Mr. Azad said talking to reporters on the sidelines of the platinum jubilee celebrations of the Dr. Ida B. Scudder Cancer Centre at the Christian Medical College here.
On the Janani Suraksha Yojana (under which pregnant women are taken care of from conception till delivery), which has been merged with the Janani Sishu Suraksha Yojana, he said the government had anctioned Rs. 2,000 crore in 2012-13, benefiting 98 lakh mothers. Under the scheme, 19,000 ambulances were sanctioned for carrying pregnant women to hospitals for delivery. If a woman used a private taxi due to non-availability of an ambulance, the transport cost would be reimbursed.
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Mr. Azad said the Centre told the States that it would not meet the running expenses of the ambulance service where they failed to change the name as National Ambulance Service, the new name given to the centrally-funded programme.
Most States had named the service after the ruling party or their Chief Ministers. The Centre therefore named it as the National Ambulance Service in order to bring about uniformity in nomenclature. Except Gujarat, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, all States had changed the names of the service, said Mr. Azad.