Plan Panel to revisit health chapter in 12th Plan after furore

Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has given this assurance to health experts after they raised objections to the way some of its proposals were drafted in the Draft 12th Plan on health sector.

The Health and Family Welfare Ministry has separately flagged its concerns over the draft Plan to the Planning Commission and demanded a higher allocation for health sector.

Ahluwalia asked the experts, some of whom were part of its own expert group on universal health care, to give their suggestions by Monday and assured them that the same will be taken on board.

Sources say the Plan Panel has assured experts that the draft plan would be revisited and redrafted.

The lower allocation for the health sector goes against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's directions to the plan panel to raise resources in a way that public spending on health increases to 2.5 pc of GDP over the five years of the Plan period.

In the draft 12th Plan on health, to be finalized by August-end, the allocation for the sector has been proposed at 1.58 per cent of GDP.

The proposal has met with stiff resistance from the expert group on universal health coverage which the Planning Commission itself had set up in 2010 to recommend ways to universalize public health delivery in India.