National Health Policy 2017: All You Need to Know

The National Health Policy 2017 has been approved by the Union Cabinet. The new policy will replace the health policy framed in the year 2002.

The policy aims to provide healthcare to all by highlighting the existing and emerging challenges that arise from the ever changing epidemiological, socio-economic and technological situations.

Highlights of the Policy

1. The policy has been framed in a way to increase public healthcare expenditure from existing 1.4% to 2.5% of GDP, with over two-thirds of the resources utilized for primary healthcare.
2. The new policy focuses on providing an assured comprehensive primary healthcare via “Health and Wellness Centers”.
3. The new policy has also proposed free drugs, free diagnostics, free emergency and vital healthcare services required in all public hospitals to provide financial protection and healthcare access.
4. The policy is a complete package, which will include care for mental health, all major non-communicable diseases, palliative care, geriatric healthcare and rehabilitative care services.
5. It aims to create periodic tracking of the disability adjusted life years (DALY) Index, and its trends by the year 2022.
6. It seeks to expand and reinforce the regulatory environment by setting healthcare standards and by safeguarding healthcare quality.
7. The policy also focuses on reforming existing regulatory healthcare systems for manufacturing of easing devices and drugs for promoting “Make in India” and also for reforming country’s medical education level.
8. It also supports advancement of mid-level service providers, nurse practitioners, public health cadre for improving availability of suitable health human resource.
9. The target of the policy is to safeguard accessibility of 2 beds per 1000 population in hospitals for enabling access within golden hour.
10. The policy aims to upsurge life expectancy to 70 years from 67.5 by the end of the year 2025.
11. It seeks to lessen total fertility rate (TFR) to 2.1 at both the national and sub-national level by the end of the year 2025.
12. The policy aims at reducing children mortality rate under age of 5 years to 23 on every 1000 by the year 2025 and decreasing the maternal mortality rate by the end of year 2020 to 100.
13. The policy also proposes to decrease mortality rate of neo-natal to 16 by the end of 2025, decrease  mortality rate of infants to 28 by the end of 2019, and reduce rate of still birth to single digit by the end of 2025.