National Rural Health Mission

Abstract

The health related indices in our country are far from satisfactory and the country still bears an enormous share of the global disease burden. The lack of accessibility, scarce availability and the poor quality of health services and personnel in the remote rural and underdeveloped urban areas have been the major obstacles to the delivery of quality health care services in a vast and culturally diverse country with inter- and intra-regional variations and inequalities. The already over-stretched public health care system has been grappling with the deficiencies in linkage with the collateral health determinants, gross shortage and non utilization of infrastructure, financial and human resources. Revitalizing the existing primary health care infrastructure under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) will bring about the long overdue architectural corrections in the health care sector and be able to provide accessible, affordable, accountable, effective and reliable health care especially to the under-privileged sections of the society. NRHM is based on the principles of decentralisation of the health system, empowerment of the community and the panchayati raj institutions. Effective integration of health concerns with other health determinants like sanitation, hygiene and nutrition through district health plan is being made.