Infrastructure under the National Health Mission

• Under  National Health Mission (NHM), Financial support is provided to States to strengthen the public health system including upgradation of existing or construction of new infrastructure.

• Under NHM high focus states can spend upto 33% and other States upto 25% of their NHM funds on infrastructure.

• The population Norms for setting up of public health facilities are as under :

Sub Centre: 1 per 5,000 population in general areas and 1 per 3,000 population in difficult/tribal and hilly areas

Primary Health Centre: 1 per 30,000 population in general areas and 1 per 20,000 population in difficult/tribal and hilly areas

Community Health Centre: 1 per 1,20,000 population in general areas and 1 per 80,000 population in difficult/tribal and hilly areas. 

• A new norm has also been adopted for setting up a SHC based on ‘time to care’ within 30 minutes by walk from a habitation has been adopted for selected district of hilly and Desert areas.

• It has also been decided to strengthen Sub-Health Centres based on 'time to care' within minutes by walk from habitations has been adopted in selected districts of hilly States and desert areas.

• As per the Rural Health Statistics (RHS) 2015, as on 31.3.2015 the status of public health facilities function in the Country is as under:

  o 1, 53,655 Sub Centres (SCs),

  o 25,308 Primary Health Centres (PHCs),

  o 5,396 Community Health Centres (CHCs),

  o 1022 Sub-divisional Hospitals (SDHs) & 763 Districts Hospitals (DH) in the country

• There is  a shortfall of 33145 SCs (20%), 6556 PHCs (22%) and 2316 CHCs (32%) across the country as per the Rural Health Statistics (RHS) 2015. 

• First Referral Units (FRU) provides comprehensive obstetric care services including like cesarean section,  newborn care,emergency care of sick children, full range of  family planning services, safe abortion services treatment of STI/RTI availability of blood storage unit and referral transport services. Number of FRUs has increased significantly from 940 in 2005 to 2712 in 2016 (upto 31.03.2016).

• There are 9197 PHCs that are operational as 24X7 facilities as on 31.03.2016.