Hyderabad: The health sector has seen a big transformation during the last year of the ‘Praja Palana’. According to the officials, immediately after taking the charge, the Chief Minister Revanth Reddy doubled the Arogyasri limit and increased the funding for the health department there by removing the eclipse that had fallen on the health department for the last ten years. A senior official said that the government took up the initiative of sanctioning new medical, nursing, and paramedical colleges; an increase in seats, beds, and other programmes were taken up.
Besides this, the pilot project of issuing family digital health cards was undertaken, unlike anywhere else in the country. The CM made plans with new ideas to create a State health profile with these cards and to eliminate the need for anyone to go to the hospital to carry old records every time.
The official said that while the previous government spent an average of Rs 52 crore per month under Rajiv Arogyasri from 2014 to October 2023, the State government spent an average of Rs 76 crore per month from December 2023 to December 2024. Immediately after the formation of the Praja government, the free medical limit under Rajiv Arogyasri was increased from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh. The issue of the price hike of Arogyasri treatments, which was pending for 11 years, was resolved in six months. The prices of 1,375 medical treatments under the Arogyasri scheme were increased by about 20 per cent; thus, the Praja Palana revived Arogyasri. The previous government was criminally negligent in not filling up the vacancies in government hospitals. Within a short time of the formation of the public government, 7,750 posts in the health department were filled. The Medical and Health Services Recruitment Board (MHSRB) issued a notification for 6,494 more posts. The process of filling these posts is currently ongoing. The MHSRB will soon issue notifications for 607 more assistant professor posts, 1,690 civil assistant surgeon (specialist) posts, and 308 pharmacist (AYUSH) posts.
The official informed that within eight months of the formation of the public government in the State, eight government medical colleges were made available. In a very short period of time, colleges and hospitals have been established in Ulugu, Gadwal, Narsampet, Narayanpet, Medak, Qutbullapur, Maheshwaram, and Yadadri. With this, the number of MBBS seats in government medical colleges in the State increased from 3,690 to 4,090. A 50-bed hospital in Kodangal has been upgraded to a 220-bed hospital. Speciality medical services will be available to the people of Vikarabad district in this hospital. Within a year, 16 nursing colleges and 28 paramedical colleges have been made available to students. A total of 960 seats, with 60 BSc seats in each nursing college, have been made available to students from this academic year itself.
