Ambitious rural health plan for India

Health workers in India have welcomed a new programme which aims to deliver health care to millions of poor villagers around the country saying it was long overdue.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, launched the programme by the National Rural Health Mission which will spend 67 billion rupees ($1.5bn) across some 300,000 villages, saying that India had long neglected providing healthcare for its billion-plus population.

India's governing alliance has pledged to focus on improving the lives of the country's rural poor and Mr Singh says the slow rate of improvement in the health status of people has been a matter of great concern and that India has "grievously erred in many of their health programmes and paid inadequate attention to public health."

A radical overhaul of the health system is proposed by giving more powers to the states and to village councils to implement healthcare plans and aims to provide every Indian village with a woman trained in healthcare, focusing in particular on providing primary health care and assistance to newborns and pregnant mothers.

The programme will be implemented across India and will initially target some of India's poorest states in the north and north-east.

Dr Alok Mukhopadhaya of the Voluntary Health Association of India says that for the first time they are looking at some fundamental issues such as strengthening rural infrastructure, but he adds that a lot will depend on the quality of local authorities and state governments and their utilisation of the funds.

According to the latest World Health Organisation report, nearly 136,000 women die each year because of maternal complications and nearly 2.3 million children under the age of five die annually.

Most of the deaths, WHO says, can be prevented by simple health care measures.