In Covid times, health, wellness gets a boost

BOX Prevention better than cure

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Quoting Charaka, considered the father of Indian system of medicine, Khattar said that the ‘Charaka Samhita’ stated: “It is more important to prevent the occurrence of disease than to seek a cure”.

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Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 12

With the Covid pandemic putting additional burden on the healthcare system, health and wellness received special attention of Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar when he presented his government’s Budget today as he allocated an outlay of Rs 7,731 crore, 20.2 per cent above last year.

The proposed outlay includes an outlay of Rs 4,606 crore for health and family welfare, Rs 2,136 crore for medical education and research, Rs 315 crore for AYUSH, Rs 238 crore for employees state insurance healthcare, Rs 42 crore for food and drugs administration and Rs 394 crore for sports.

“Health has been accorded top priority by the government. In these challenging times, my government has ensured availability, accessibility and affordability of healthcare services for all,” Khattar said in the beginning of his speech on health and wellness.

“While combating the pandemic, we recruited 956 regular doctors and 206 AYUSH medical officers. 350 posts of medical officers and 60 posts of dental surgeons will be created during this financial year to provide additional health professionals,” he added.

He said that extensive sampling through RTPCR and rapid antigen testing kits are being done in all districts of Haryana. More than 58 lakh samples have been collected so far. To ensure proper treatment of Covid patients, we took the initiative and established plasma banks at Faridabad, Gurugram, Panchkula, Rohtak and Karnal wherein 4,856 plasma units have been collected from Covid-recovered patients and 3,291 patients have been administered plasma therapy treatment.

The CM said that to strengthen the health infrastructure, the bed strength in various health institutions has been increased by about 3,000 in the past five years.

He further announced that to meet the growing demand for hospital beds, the government has decided to increase the bed capacity of all civil hospitals to 200 from their existing bed capacity.

Quoting Charaka, considered the father of the Indian system of medicine, Khattar said that the ‘Charaka Samhita’ stated that “It is more important to prevent the occurrence of disease than to seek a cure”.

With this objective in mind, the government has proposed to set up 1,000 health wellness centres throughout the state under the AYUSH Department to take a holistic approach towards the wellbeing of the community. In these centres, a comprehensive range of services spanning preventive, promotive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative care will be provided. All types of facilities such as ‘yogashala’, meditation, physical exercise besides provision of medicines and testing and checking facilities will be made available to the people.