With the national health policy circulated among the states, what is the State s agenda for health?
Maharashtra is not a unique state and the national health policy is comprehensive enough to tackle health issues of the State. Maharashtra, like any other state, will adopt a strategy within the broad framework of this policy. For the state especially, we have stressed upon infrastructure for the rural area. There is an exigency for increasing the number of health centres in rural areas based on geography and not just on population density. In other words, population norm obviates the need for a health centre in a region, even if the population is not dense, where the terrain is hilly and people cannot cover large distances for treatment. Stabilisation of population is another important task. Also, in Maharashtra there is an urgent need to tackle HIV and Aids cases. Third is to bring down morbidity and mortality due to communicable diseases. We have to also face the newer problems of non-communicable diseases due to stress, like heart diseases. But there is still a stigma attached to A
