Bhubaneswar: Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan Wednesday once again urged Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to implement the Ayushman Bharat health insurance scheme in Odisha during his visit to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here.
Interacting with reporters, Vardhan said, “We have been repeatedly asking the state government to implement the Ayushman Bharat scheme to ensure poor people are not deprived of quality healthcare facilities.”
Earlier, the state government had rejected the Centre’s healthcare proposal, saying that it is implementing the Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana for the people.
“We have plans to set up 1.5 lakh health and wellness centres under the scheme by 2022. We have completed 25,000 centres while around 40,000 centres will come up end of March 2020,” the minister said.
A selection committee will evaluate the feasibility of opening two more medical colleges in Odisha, he said. “After coming to power we decided to open 75 new medical colleges in backward and aspirational districts which never occurred to people in power in the last 50 years. You will be happy to know that we have completed all process and sanctioned 49 such hospitals,” he added.
The Union Health Minister along with Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan unveiled the statue of former Prime Minister late Atal Bihari Vajpayee, at AIIMS and dedicated the patient care facilities to the people.
The Centre has already sanctioned six new medical colleges in district headquarter hospitals for Odisha while the selection committee will scrutinise two more proposals from the state, he pointed out.