For the healthcare sector, it is the beginning of a long journey

In normal parlance, the health status of any country largely depends upon the available health infrastructure, healthcare human resources, governmental policies and budgetary allocations targeted towards the life sciences and healthcare sector. While India has over the years fallen short on providing the required focus to the sector, the Union government, with its holistic approach, focused policies to uplift the health and wellbeing of people, budgetary allocations and the pandemic situations, has provided the health sector much-needed importance.

While there has been a 137 percent increase in the budget allocation for the health and wellbeing sector as compared to Budget 2020, on a finer reading of Budget 2021, it can be noticed that a major part of the healthcare allocation is spread across water and sanitisation, and the one-time COVID-19 vaccination cost. Only a part of the PM AatmaNirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana (~Rs 64,000 crore) is budgeted in FY 21-22 (which is spread over six years).

Also, while the government is aiming at strengthening the public healthcare infrastructure, there has been no policy amendments to facilitate private participation to provide an impetus and a further push in strengthening the healthcare infrastructure and accessibility to healthcare services by all.

On the positive front, with introduction of the new yojana, the government is effectively trying to strengthen the public health infrastructure. It will entail better infrastructure enabling equitable access to healthcare facilities and reduce the overall out-of-pocket expenses for the rural population on healthcare services. Few areas which would have an infrastructural boost are:

• Support to over 28,000 health and wellness centres


• Set-up of integrated public health labs and about 3,300 block public health units


• Set-up of critical care hospital blocks in over 600 districts


• Expansion of integrated health information portal to all states/UTs and connection with all public health labs


• Setting-up of a national institution for one health – regional research platform for WHO South East Asia Region


• Set-up of nine bio-safety labs and four regional National Institutes for Virology

Budget 2021 has also placed a renewed focus on improving the nutritional content for rural population and availability of clean water and sanitisation as a step towards achieving universal health.

A specific budget of Rs 35,000 crore is also allocated towards COVID-19 vaccination, showcasing the government’s intent to vaccinate a large part of the population; more than 50-60 crore population can be covered by the funds allocated.