Kerala government spent ₹1,400 crore on AB-KASP

Kerala’s good health indicators, paradoxically, has perhaps been working against the State’s interests, going by the reduced Central allocation for major Centre-State health initiatives, Health Minister Veena George said in the Assembly on Monday.

Replying to the discussion on demand for grants on public health and family welfare, she said while the beneficiaries for the integrated health financing scheme, Ayushman Bharat-Karunya Arogya Suraksha Padhati (AB-KASP), had been growing, the Centre’s allocation for the scheme had remained unchanged, at about 9% of the total expenditure incurred by the State.

The number of beneficiaries availing free medical treatment under the AB-KASP had grown from 3.8 lakh in 2020-21 to 5.4 lakh in 2021-22 and 5.8 lakh in 2022-23 (till December 2022). The State government’s expenditure had grown from ₹700 crore in 2020 to over ₹1,400 crore in the last financial year, she said.

Listing out the achievements in the health sector during the term of the second LDF Government, she said 2,946 PSC appointments had been made in the department in the past two years and 347 posts had been created in the Directorate of Health Services.

Kerala had gone much ahead in digital health, with e-health linkages extended to 528 health institutions. Of this, 249 hospitals were paperless.

During the term of this government, 724 ICU beds, 878 oxygen beds, and over 900 ventilators had been added to the system. The State had also achieved self-sufficiency in oxygen production, a fact which had come in for appreciation by the WHO, she said.

Kerala was on the way to becoming a total and comprehensive palliative care delivery State and palliative care wards would be opened in all 10 government medical college hospitals. The Neurology department in the Medical College Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram, had been chosen as one of the Stroke Registry centres by the ICMR, Ms. George said.

The demand on grants for public health and family welfare was passed by the Assembly by voice vote. The Hindu