World Vision India’s Melghat Area Development Programme along with
other NGOs organized a ‘Health Budget Analysis Meeting at Amaravati on 28th
March, 2010. The main objective of the meeting was to do an analysis of the
budget, especially in context to the Amaravati District, which is very poor in
terms of Health, when compared to other districts in the region.
Prasanth Remos, CEHAT from Mumbai, an NGO that works on budget
related issues, facilitated the analysis. The Analysis of the Health budget was
done mainly comparing Amaravati District with other Districts in Maharashtra.
The per capita health expenditure in Amravati district is very low than other
district. In 2001 it was Rs.152/- and 2006 - Rs.208.
The analysis brought out many issues like - the Bed Occupancy Rate
(BOR) of Amravati district was very less than other district. And specially focusing
on Melghat area, Lack of political will, lack of infrastructure facilities and
lab equipments, less fund allocated for medicines in the hospital, lack of
sufficient beds in the hospital, lack of clarity in National Rural Health
Mission guidelines, lack of networking among different civil society
organisations and vacancy of adequate hospital staff were burning issues.
The analysis also brought out the fact that, Melghat which had 14
blocks was given less allocation of budget than other areas which had just 8
blocks. This is was solely because the local MLA had a stronger voice within
the political party. This despite the fact that these 14 blocks has higher
malnutrition rates as well.
And, the budget allocation for Melghat is less than the state average.
“It should be atleast equal to the state average,” says the team that analysed
the budget. Whereas, other areas have budget that are even higher than the
state average.
At the end of the analysis, the team came up with a set of
recommendations. The key recommendations being – Increased budget allocation in
context to the population and need and not political or individual strength of
the representative (MLA), Increase in the number of beds (because many tribal
people get admitted and are forced to sleep on the floors, because of lack of
beds) and the budget should be atleast closer to the state average of 203.
World Vision India also organized a press conference where various
local journalists were presented the recommendations on the health budget analysis
of Amravati district. “We hope that the MLAs would consider the recommendations
after they read it in the new papers and make the changes before the budget is
approved,” says Job Reddy, Programme Manager, Melghat ADP.
Other
partners who were part of the analysis were – EFICOR, Save the Children, Khoj
and other local NGOs, 25 participants in total.
