New Delhi, Jan 12 (PTI) Director General of World Intellectual Property Organisation Francis Gurry has praised the Centre's health scheme Ayushman Bharat and congratulated Prime Minister Narendra Modi on its success.

"WIPO Director General Gurry meets CEO of #AyushmanBharat @Ibhushan, lauds ambitious health scheme that is bringing free health care to hundreds of thousands, underlines importance of innovation to health and congratulates PM @narendramodi on this incredible success," WIPO tweeted.

The ambitious healthcare scheme, touted as the world's largest, aims to benefit more than 10 crore poor families in the country.

On January 1, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley termed Ayushman Bharat a "game changer" in healthcare and said on an average 5,000 claims are being settled every day since its rollout on September 23, 2018.

The total number of hospitals covered by this scheme is 16,000 and increasing steadily. More than 50 per cent of the implementing hospitals are in private sector.

Jaitley had said in the first 100 days, 6.85 lakh patients have been provided hospital treatment and 5.1 lakh claimants have availed the scheme, for which payment has been released.

All states and Union territories, barring Delhi, Telangana and Odisha, have signed agreements with the health ministry for implementing the scheme.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)