Universal Health Coverage in the Country

The Twelfth Plan seeks to strengthen initiatives taken in the Eleventh Plan to expand the reach of health care and work towards the long term objective of establishing a system of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in the country for providing assured access to a defined essential range of medicines and treatment entirely free for a large percentage of the population.

 Several ongoing initiatives like Reproductive and Child Health, Control of Communicable and Non-communicable Diseases, have the features of universal coverage through public health facilities for target population. 

The steps towards achieving UHC are an incremental process which is linked to the availability of adequate financial resources. 

This is a process which is envisaged to unfold over two or three Plan period. 

In order to correct regional imbalances in availability and affordability of tertiary healthcare services and to augment facilities for quality medical education in the country, the Government has launched the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY). 

Setting up of AIIMS Raipur, apart from AIIMS Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur, Patna and Rishikesh, has been taken up under Phase-I of PMSSY. 

This was stated by Shri Ghulam Nabi Azad, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha today.