{"id":322509,"date":"2020-04-22T11:39:38","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T11:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=322509"},"modified":"2020-04-22T11:39:38","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T11:39:38","slug":"govt-approves-rs-15000-crore-for-covid-19-emergency-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/govt-approves-rs-15000-crore-for-covid-19-emergency-response\/","title":{"rendered":"Govt approves Rs 15000 crore for COVID-19 Emergency Response"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/65-year-old-man-from-mohali-dies-of-coronavirus\/virus-2-3\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-321791\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-321791 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/virus-2-1-232x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"232\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2020\/03\/virus-2-1-232x300.jpg 232w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2020\/03\/virus-2-1-324x420.jpg 324w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2020\/03\/virus-2-1.jpg 355w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 232px) 100vw, 232px\" \/><\/a>The government on Wednesday approved Rs. 15,000 crore for &#8216;India COVID-19 Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness Package&#8217;. The funds sanctioned will be utilized in 3 Phases and for immediate COVID-19 Emergency Response (an amount of Rs. 7,774 Crore) has been provisioned and rest for medium-term support (1-4 years) to be provided under mission mode approach.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">The key objectives of the package include mounting emergency response to slow and limit COVID-19 in India through the development of diagnostics and COV1D-dedicatcd treatment facilities, centralized procurement of essential medical equipment and drugs required for treatment of infected patients, strengthen and build resilient National and State health systems to support prevention and preparedness for future disease outbreaks, setting up of laboratories and bolster surveillance activities, bio-security preparedness, pandemic research and proactively engage communities and conduct risk communication activities. These interventions and initiatives would be implemented under the overall umbrella of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">In Phase 1, the Ministry of Health &amp; Family Welfare with the support of all the other line ministries has already undertaken several activities like:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">Additional funds to the tune of Rs 3,000 Cr have been released under the Package to State\/UTs, for strengthening of existing health facilities as COVID Dedicated Hospitals, Dedicated COVID Health Center and Dedicated COVID Care Centers. Detailed guidelines, protocols and advisory for quarantine, isolation, testing, treatment, disease containment, decontamination, social distancing and surveillance. Hotspots have been identified and appropriate containment strategies are being implemented.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">Diagnostics laboratories network has been expanded and our testing capacity increasing every day. In fact, leveraging on the existing multi-disease testing\u00a0\u00a0 platforms\u00a0\u00a0 under\u00a0\u00a0 National\u00a0\u00a0 TB Elimination Programme,\u00a0\u00a0 orders\u00a0\u00a0 for procurement of 13 lakhs diagnostic kits have been placed to augment COVID 19 testing.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">All health workers including Community Health Volunteers (ASHAs) have been covered with insurance under the \u201cPradhan MantriGaribKalyan Package: Insurance Scheme for Health Workers lighting COVID-19&#8243;. Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), N95 masks and ventilators, testing kits and drugs for treatment are being procured centrally.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">The major share of the expenditure will be used for mounting robust emergency response, strengthening National and State health systems followed by strengthening pandemic research and multi-sector national institutions and platforms for One-Health, community engagement and risk communications and implementation, management, capacity building, monitoring and evaluation component. M\/o Health &amp; Family Welfare has been authorized to re-appropriate resources among components of the package and among the various implementation agencies (National Health Mission, Central Procurement, Railways, Dept. of Health Research\/ICMR, National Centre for Disease Control) as per the evolving emergent situation.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The government on Wednesday approved Rs. 15,000 crore for &#8216;India COVID-19 Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness Package&#8217;. The funds sanctioned will be utilized in 3 Phases and for immediate COVID-19 Emergency Response (an amount of Rs. 7,774 Crore) has been provisioned and rest for medium-term support (1-4 years) to be provided under mission mode [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":321791,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[12750,12950,12949,4477],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322509"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322510,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322509\/revisions\/322510"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/321791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}