National Rural Health Mission – The way to move forward

When in April 2005, National Rural Health Mission was commissioned and initiated by the Govt. of India to address the deserted health care issues in rural areas, the purpose of the mission was to ensure the institutionalization of a functional and efficient health care system in those areas. But, some critics, as they always do, rendered the targets envisaged by the mission to be too idealistic to be achieved in such a short span. Others accused the mission’s targets of being devoid of any realism and rationality. 

Finally after 9 years, we can say that those critics were absolutely right. But still, we are proud of what the mission has achieved in such a short span. Yes, we might not have accomplished our desired goal of making the health services accessible to each and every part of the country. Yes, there is still a huge dearth of good medical facilities, hospitals and doctors in rural areas. Yes, women still die while giving birth while children still succumb to basic health diseases. But, the mission still remains a success, a minor success for that matter. The conditions in the interiors have definitely improved which augurs well for India. 

Broadly speaking, the public health centres which had been dysfunctional for so many years have showed signs of improvement. The participation of the community in the health sector activities has showed resurgence after years of indifference. Availability of the therapeutic drugs for primary health care in the govt. sponsored medical outlets has improved. Similarly, the availability of the generic drugs has helped in reducing the cost of the treatments in rural areas which makes it more viable for the people living in those areas to go and avail medical treatments. Huge recruitment and deployment of accredited social health activists and “Anganwadi” workers have helped in amputating the bottlenecks by creating awareness among people about the benefits available to them under the scheme. These social health activists and anganwadi workers play a role of a coordinator between the people and the public health centres, which helps in penetrating in those areas which can’t be reached through formal organizational structures. 

All of this has improved the accessibility of the medical/health services in rural areas, which is quite evident from the decreasing number of people dying due to the non-availability or the lack of the health care facilities. It is true that we are quite far away from our mark, it might take us another 50 years to make health service accessible to each and every citizen of this country. But, a start is always better than no start.