Health and Wellbeing

There is substantial increase in investment in Health Infrastructure and the Budget outlay for Health and Wellbeing is Rs 2,23,846 crore in BE 2021-22 as against this year’s BE of Rs 94,452 crore, an increase of 137 percentage.
The Finance Minister announced that a new centrally sponsored scheme, PM Aatma Nirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana, will be launched with an outlay of about Rs 64, 180 crore over 6 years.

PM Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana

The PM Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana will develop the capacities of primary, secondary and tertiary care health systems, strengthen existing institutions and create new institutions to cater to detection and cure of new and emerging diseases. This scheme will be in additions to National Health Mission (NHM).
The scheme will support 17,000 rural and 11,000 urban health and wellness centres, and help set up integrated public health labs in all districts and 3,382 block public health units in 11 states. The fund for the scheme will also be used for establishing critical care hospital blocks in 602 districts and 12 central institutions.
The PM Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana will oversee strengthening of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), its 5 regional branches and 20 metropolitan health surveillance units. Under the initiatve Integrated Health Information Portal will be expanded to all states and UTs to connect all public health labs.
The government will also operationalise 17 new public health units and strengthen 33 existing public health units at Points of Entry, which include 32 airports, 11 seaports and 7 land crossings.
As part of PM Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana, Centre will also set up 15 health emergency operation centers and 2 mobile hospitals. It will also establish a national institution for One Health, a Regional Research Platform for WHO South East Asia Region, 9 Bio-Safety Level III laboratories and 4 regional National Institutes for Virology.

Vaccines

Provision of Rs 35,000 crore made for Covid-19 vaccine in BE 2021-22.
The Pneumococcal Vaccine, a Made in India product, presently limited to only 5 states, will be rolled out across the country aimed at averting 50,000 child deaths annually.

Pneumococcal Vaccine

SII’s pneumococcal vaccine is developed through a collaboration spanning over a decade with the health organisation PATH and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Based on the trials, Pneumosil was licensed by the Drugs Controller General (India) in July 2020.
The vaccine also makes SII the world’s third supplier of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) and the first developing country vaccine manufacturer to access the global PCV market.
It targets the pneumococcal bacterium, which causes pneumonia and other serious life-threatening diseases such as meningitis and sepsis, and is estimated to cause nearly four lakh deaths in children under five years of age each year worldwide.

Nutrition

Government will merge the Supplementary Nutrition Programme and the PoshanAbhiyan and launch the Mission Poshan 2.0. Government will adopt an intensified strategy to improve nutritional outcomes across 112 Aspirational Districts.
Poshan 2.0 now combines the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), Anganwadi services, PoshanAbhiyan, Scheme For Adolescent Girls and National Creche Scheme.

Universal Coverage of Water Supply and Swachch Bharat Mission

The Finance Minister announced that the Jal Jeevan Mission (Urban), will be launched for universal water supply in all 4,378 Urban Local Bodies with 2.86 crore household tap connections, as well as liquid waste management in 500 AMRUT cities.
It will be implemented over 5 years, with an outlay of Rs. 2,87,000 crore. Moreover, the Urban Swachh Bharat Mission will be implemented with a total financial allocation of Rs 1,41,678 crore over a period of 5 years from 2021-2026.
Also to tackle the burgeoning problem of air pollution, government proposed to provide an amount of Rs. 2,217 crore for 42 urban centres with a million-plus population in this budget.
A voluntary vehicle scrapping policy to phase out old and unfit vehicles was also announced.

Vehicle Scrapping Policy

The new policy will help in encouraging the fuel-efficient and environment-friendly vehicles.
Thus, it will reduce the vehicular pollution and cut the India’s huge oil import bills.
As per the proposed Vehicle Scrappage Policy, if any vehicle fails the fitness test more than thrice, it will be subjected to mandatory scrapping.
However, the government is yet to roll out the final scrappage policy.
The voluntary scrappage policy will be based on fitness tests.
Life has been set at 20 years in case of private vehicles while 15 years have been set for commercial vehicles.

Background

This announcement by the government has made just after government’s announcement of a scrappage policy for vehicles that are used by its various departments and public sector undertakings (PSUs).
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) also approved the vehicle scrappage policy recently for vehicles older than 15 years and that are owned by the government and PSUs.
This policy would apply to central and state government-owned vehicles from April 1, 2022.