KL Report
SRINAGAR
Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad today said that Health and Education are the two important pillars on which edifice of a strong nation rests adding that ‘our future prominence in the world, in fact, hinges on these two vital ingredients of progress.
This was stated by the Union Minister at function ‘Healthy India, stronger India’ function organized by Mahavir Society for Education and Research (MSER) at Vijaypur, Jammu at General Zorawar Singh auditorium in Jammu University.
Azad said UPA Government has positioned ‘health and education’ at the centre stage of its development strategy. Two core programmes of our development agenda are National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). He informed that centre government has made massive and unprecedented investments to strengthen and expand health and educational systems across the country.
Union Minister informed that under NRHM alone, more than Rs 96000 crores have been invested into the health systems so far. He said many new initiatives like Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakaram (JSSK), Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakaram (RBSK) etc have been rolled out to improve maternal and child health. He said vaccine programme has been expanded by introducing Hepatitis-B and Pentavalent vaccines.
He further said that Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram (JSSK) has been implemented across the country including Jammu and Kashmir State with a view to encourage all pregnant women to deliver in Public Health Facilities and fulfill the commitment of achieving cent percent institutional deliveries.
Azad said that six new AIIMS like institutes are soon going to become a reality in India as the work on them is at very advanced stage. He said “we are committed to upscale the expenditure on health during 12th plan and strengthen services to carve out an affordable and robust health care system consistent with our specific needs and requirements as also realize the goal of ‘health for all’.”
He informed that awareness and information about health schemes played an important role in promotion of health and disease prevention as also their treatment. He said more than 10,000 experts have been empanelled across the country to take part in these programmes to spread awareness about the health issues. So far more than 17000 editions of this programme have been telecast and broadcast across the country. He said MSER has taken a timely initiative for dissemination of information relating to health and education.
