FM announces measures to make health infrastructure pandemic ready

Sithraman also spoke about encouraging research in healthcare and having a National Institutional Platform for One Health by the country's apex health research body Indian Council of Medical Research

In the fifth and final tranche of stimulus announcements, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday made two significant announcements that may have far reaching implications on creating a pandemic-ready health infrastructure in the country in the coming years - one is to have infectious disease hospital blocks in all districts and having integrated public health labs in all districts and block levels to manage pandemics.

While the finance minister did not elaborate on the government expenditure planned for these initiatives, the private sector players say that it would be difficult to implement the plan and also scale it up without