Budget 2013-14: Health experts disappointed with budget

MUMBAI: In 2012, Indian authorities had started discussing about ways to implement universal health access or healthcare-for-all policy. In 2012, hectic meetings were held to discuss the focus health areas that would get funding from the 12th Five-Year Plan.
Health seemed, at long, to have become a priority area for the government. It is in this backdrop that public health experts are devastated with finance minister P Chidambaram's budget for 2013-14.The budget didn't reflect any of the enthusiasm that the government had displayed throughout last year.
Public health expert from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Dr Ravi Duggal, said there is nothing new to look forward to in the budget. "The government has shifted some allocation here or changed the nomenclature there, but it is all the same thing." He said that even if the government had increased the over health budget allocation by 21%, it needs to be seen how much is actually spent at the end of the year. He said there is no new allocation for district hospitals or towards anti-tobacco measures. "The state governments fail to allocate money for the district hospitals. Now, the union government hasn't also."
The merging of the rural and urban health missions was perhaps the most significant of the minister's budget-day speech. "It didn't make sense to have two vertical programmes when both have the same agenda. Moreover, the National Health Mission's allocation of over Rs 21,000 crore (an increase of 24% over last year) seems good," said healthcare management consultant Dr Vivek Desai. There were no sops for the healthcare industry, which got infrastructure status two years back. "There is nothing to boost capital investment in private healthcare," said Desai.
Consulting firm E&Y's Hitesh Sharma said there was nothing direct or immediate for the people as far as this year's health budget was concerned. "But it is good that the focus is on capacity building and training manpower for long-term gains. More medical schools like AIIMS are the need of the hour."
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