The Government of India is making systematic efforts to combat the pandemic through providing essentials goods and medicines to remote corners of India with the help of the UDAN programme. To make the efforts more inclusive, the government announced recently that all the beneficiaries under the Ayushman Bharat Yojna will not be charged anything for diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19. Complete Coverage: Coronavirus
Crux of the Matter
Lifeline UDAN The Ministry of Civil Aviation launched Lifeline UDAN to transport essential goods and medicines to various parts of the country. Flights under the programme began operations from March 27 and in just 5 days, had supplied more than 15 tonnes of cargo through more than 74 flights. Air India and its subsidiaries operated 11 flights on the Mumbai-New Delhi-Guwahati-Mumbai route to deliver essential goods and medical supplies to Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Pune and on the New Delhi-Hyderabad-Trivandrum-Goa-New Delhi route to deliver cargo to Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Kerala, and ICMR. Air India and the Indian Air Force also assisted in delivering the cargo to places like Guwahati, Imphal, Nagaland, Ladakh, Port Blair, etc.
Long Live India The National Health Authority (NHA) announced that the COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment will be available free of cost for beneficiaries under the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojna (AB PMJAY). Testing and treatment at listed hospitals and private laboratories will not be charged for the beneficiaries, around 50 crore people. Under the scheme, the listed hospitals are allowed to tie up with authorized testing facilities to diagnose COVID-19. NHA has said that all the tests must be carried out as per guidelines issued by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR).
Active private sector involvement will be critical in case there is a surge in the number of COVID-19 patient that need care. States are in the process of enlisting private sector hospitals that can be converted into COVID-19 ONLY hospitals. National Health Agency
Curiopedia
About UDAN UDAN, which stands for Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik, is a scheme launched by PM Modi under the National Civil Aviation Policy. It is primarily set up for making air travel in the country affordable and available. It had two components: developing and operationalising new regional airports and operationalising affordable flight routes that connect underserved and unserved airports. About Ayushman Bharat AB PMJAY is a programme launched under the National Health Policy with an aim to provide free health coverage to secondary and tertiary levels of population. Remarkably, this is the world’s largest state-sponsored health assurance scheme. This health scheme provides a cover of Rs. 5 lakhs per family every year for treatment in listed private and public hospitals. Nearly 10.7 crore households across India are beneficiaries of this.
Ayushman has a minimal list of exclusions. They are OPD, drug rehabilitation programme, cosmetic related procedures, fertility-related procedures, organ transplants, and individual diagnostics.
In Modi’s regime, there are around 6 schemes in the list of ‘Core of Core Schemes’ and 28 schemes in the Core Sectors which have been introduced.
Under the UDAN scheme, half of the ticket fares are capped at ₹2500.
Curated Coverage
Comments