News Excerpt:
The Union Government has renamed the Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centres (AB-HWCs) as ‘Ayushman Arogya Mandir’ with the tagline ‘Arogyam Parmam Dhanam’.
About Ayushman Bharat – Health and Wellness Centre:
- Ayushman Bharat (AB) attempts to move from a selective approach to health care to deliver a comprehensive range of preventive, promotive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative care services.
- HWC envisages delivering an expanded range of services beyond maternal and child health care, including care for non-communicable diseases.
Ayushman Bharat Scheme:
- The National Health Policy 2017 recommended launching a scheme to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
- In 2018, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) implemented this scheme as a centrally sponsored scheme, wherein the Central and State governments share the expenditure incurred in premium payment.
- The primary objective of this scheme is to ensure that all citizens have access to healthcare services without any financial burden.
- It has two components that are complementary to each other -
- Under its first component, 1,50,000 Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs) will be created to deliver Comprehensive Primary Health Care that is universal and free to users, focusing on wellness and the delivery of an expanded range of services closer to the community.
- The second component is the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), which provides health insurance cover of Rs. 5 lakhs per year to over 10 crore poor and vulnerable families seeking secondary and tertiary care.
