New Delhi, Sep 28 (PTI) The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was apprised on Wednesday about the progress of the National Health Mission (NHM) during 2020-21 including accelerated decline in maternal mortality ratio, infant mortality rate, under five mortality rate and total fertility rate.

It also noted the progress of various diseases programmes like TB, malaria, kala-azar, dengue, tuberculosis, leprosy and viral hepatitis.

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According to an official statement, Rs 27,989 crore (central share) has been spent under the scheme during the period.

NHM is implemented for the benefit of the entire population and services are offered to everyone visiting public healthcare facilities with a special focus to vulnerable section of the society.

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The cabinet noted the role of NHM as implementing agency for the Emergency Response and Health Systems Preparedness Package (ECRP) phase-I to accelerate health system preparedness for immediate responsiveness for early prevention, detection and management of COVID-19, the statement said.

The ECRP-I is a 100 per cent centrally-supported intervention and an amount of Rs 8,147.28 crore was allocated to states and Union territories for the period up to March 31, 2021.

The interventions in this package were implemented using NHM framework, supplementing the available resources for health systems strengthening. The objective of the package was to slow down the spread of COVID-19 and to support and strengthen national and state health systems for prevention and preparedness for future.

The targets under NHM to be achieved by 2025 is to reduce MMR to 90 from 113, reduce IMR to 23 from 32, U5MR to 23 from 36 and sustain TFR to 2.1.

The aim is also to reduce prevalence of leprosy to less than 1 per 10000 population and incidence to zero in all districts and annual malaria incidence to be less than 1 per 1000.

Besides these, the target is to prevent and reduce mortality and morbidity from communicable, non-communicable; injuries and emerging diseases and reduce household out-of-pocket expenditure on total health care expenditure besides ending the TB epidemic by 2025 from the country.

U5MR in India has declined from 49 in 2013 to 36 in 2018 and the percentage annual rate of decline has accelerated to 6 from 3.9 observed during 1990-2012.

According to Sample Registration System (SRS) 2020, U5MR has further reduced to 32.

Highlighting other impact of the scheme, the Cabinet was apprised that MMR has declined by 443 points from 556 per one lakh live births in 1990 to 113 in 2016-18.

A decline of 80 per cent has been achieved in MMR since 1990, which is higher than the global decline of 45 per cent.

According to SRS 2017-19, MMR reduced to 103, IMR reduced to 28, and TFR declined from 2.3 in 2013 to 2.2 in 2018.

At the current rate of decline, India should able to reach its SDG target (MMR-70, U5MR-25) much before the due year i.e. 2030. PTI PLB

(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)