CM begins New Year with ‘Aarogya Raksha’ for all

Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu began the New Year by launching the Aarogya Raksha family health insurance scheme on Sunday.It is intended to provide health insurance cover to every individual in a family on payment of a monthly premium of Rs.100 per head for a year. Mr. Naidu said it was a Universal Health Coverage (UHC) scheme for the Above Poverty Line families. Similar schemes targeted at the BPL families would continue, he said, allaying apprehensions in this regard.Registrations through www.ntrvaidyaseva.ap.gov.in are open till February 28. Under the Aarogya Raksha, end-to-end cashless services would be rendered for 1044 diseases under secondary and tertiary care through 432 government and private hospitals.

The Chief Minister claimed that health care spending had come down substantially to about 17% after the government had taken up 30 initiatives last year. He exhorted the students of medicine, nursing, psychology and home science to contribute their best to the improvement of public health through the Swasthya Vidya Vahini.They would visit villages to prepare disease profiles thereby facilitating better public health management starting from January 2. Government’s health care adviser Jitendra Sarma said the Aarogya Raksha scheme was essential as an estimated 3% of the population fall below the poverty line every year. He observed that the World Health Organization had given a call for ‘health for all’ as early as in the 1970s and the emphasis on it had gone up since the adoption of the Alma-Ata Declaration in 1978. A. P. can now claim to be the first State to fulfil that vision, Mr. Sarma asserted, pointing out that the concept of UHC had emerged in 2012. Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas and Principal Secretary Poonam Malakondaiah were among those present.