KOHIMA— Nagaland Health minister, P Paiwang Konyak, has sought continued assistance from the World Bank and other development partners towards Nagaland in the health sector, especially on infrastructure development in rural areas.
Konyak made this appeal while speaking at the first ever ‘Northeast Knowledge Conclave for Health” on Thursday held at Taj Vivanta in Guwahati, stated an update from the minister’s office. He thanked the World Bank for organising the event to showcase the achievements in responding to the state’s specific health issues and for an in-depth discussion on the health challenges that needs to be addressed.
Highlighting the activities undertaken by Nagaland under Nagaland Health Project (NHP), the minister informed that NHP was one of the few projects and the first in the NE states funded by the World Bank, which started in the year 2015 on a pilot mode in Tuensang and Peren districts and fully scaled up to the remaining districts in 2017. He said the project was focused on community result-based financing, where health intervention by health committees aim to improve health and nutrition outcomes at the community level based on the Nagaland communitidation concept and after which the district level result-based financing (RBF) intervention was added.
He informed that the RBF component has been successfully implemented in 500 health centres including 21 community health centres (CHC), 56 primary health centres (PHC), 100 sub-centres (SC) and 323 village health centres (VHC) along with 11 District Hospitals and CMO establishments. He added that all 500 health committees have been strengthened and revived in the last seven years.
Konyak also informed that RBF investments in the health committees have in turn encouraged many communities to chip in through community contribution and participation. He stated that as many as 115 communities have contributed in cash to their own health committee and almost all have contributed in kind or physical labour, while social audit was also conducted by village councils and student bodies.
He said NHP has demonstrated that there are many ways to promote the right economic incentives to support sustainable practices in finance by bringing together on a voluntary basis, communities, government and banks.
Konyak also highlighted that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the project provided oxygen cylinders and concentrators across the state, constructed oxygen generation plant houses in eight district hospitals and installed oxygen pipelines at various health facilities.
While pointing out that the availability of finance is a key challenge in facilitating systemic transitions, he stated the investments made by the World Bank through Nagaland Health Project should be sustained to ensure that the gains made over the years are consolidated.
Konyak further urged all the neighbouring states to foster the relationship and exchange ideas and good practices to learn from each other and move together with the rest of the other states in the country.
The commissioner and secretary of Health, Y Kikheto Sema, while participating in the panel discussion on health priorities in Northeast, thanked the union government for initiating multiple programmes to control various emerging health problems along with the establishment of a new medical college and up-gradation of a nursing school to college.
He lauded the World Bank for initiating and supporting several health system strengthening projects in Nagaland. He stated that the impact on the state’s health scenario has been overwhelmingly positive as a result of all those initiatives-a significant achievement as Nagaland is the best in IMR and MMR in the country, the best malaria controlled state in Northeast region besides improvement of ICU bed infrastructure post-COVID.
Kikheto also stressed on the challenges of healthcare system on drug addiction and the growing burden of non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and mental illness. He assured that Nagaland would end TB by 2025 as committed by the country. He was skeptical of ending AIDS and HIV by 2030 as Nagaland is the second-highest number of positive cases in the country. He, however, stated that the state is on a war footing to test, treat, and prevent diseases.
While highlighting on the poor health infrastructure in the rural areas, Kikheto urged the government of India and the World Bank to continue supporting the Northeast states particularly Nagaland as it had failed to avail the EAP like other states.
