Health: The Budget has allocated INR 76,902 crore for the core health sector, including health and family welfare, health research, and AYUSH, against the previous year’s allocation of INR 69,233 crore—a modest rise of 11 percent.
However, the scope of the ‘health and wellbeing’ budget has now been increased to include healthcare, nutrition, water, sanitation, and environmental protection. And the cumulative budget for this is now INR 223,846 crore which shows up as a 137 percent increase over the previous year’s budget.
Of this larger amount, INR 35,000 crore has been set aside specifically for vaccination, with the Finance Minister offering to commit more funds if needed. The Finance Minister also launched a new centrally-sponsored scheme, PM AtmaNirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana, with an outlay of about INR 64,180 crores over six years (this allocation is part of the 2.2 lakh crore outlay for FY 21-22). The scheme aims to develop capacities of primary, secondary, and tertiary care health systems, strengthen existing national institutions, and create new institutions to cater to detection and cure of new and emerging diseases.