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Basking in the ‘success’ of Vajpayee Arogyasri, a health insurance scheme for illnesses among those from below the poverty line families, the State Health Department has been taking pride that a study published in the British Medical Journal indicated that the scheme had reduced mortality rates.

The department, however, seems to have proposed and forgotten a slew of budgetary programmes. Popular announcements such as road traffic accident relief scheme, enhanced incentives for ASHA workers and setting up of a public health institute in Bengaluru and a special treatment unit for children with rare diseases continue to be mere announcements.

While the health schemes for above the poverty line families and government employees, announced in 2014, were recently commissioned, almost all the other announcements, including setting up of a dialysis centre in two taluks of every district, AYUSH units in general hospital of one taluk of every district, generic drug store, and diagnostic centre in every government hospital, are still on paper.

With an allocation of Rs. 2 crore for implementing the Danta Bhagya scheme, the department had proposed to provide free dentures to senior citizens from BPL families. Although a committee has been set up to frame the oral health policy and distribution of dentures has taken off in a few hospitals, this scheme is yet to be implemented in toto.

The road traffic accident relief scheme is to be implemented with assistance from the Chief Minister’s medical relief fund. It is aimed at providing initial treatment cost of up to Rs. 25,000 to accident victims availing themselves of treatment in government empanelled hospitals. A sum of Rs. 5 crore had been set aside for this. The department is working on modalities to launch this shortly, sources said.

Akhila Vasan from Karnataka Janarogya Chaluvali termed this as “zero commitment” by the government even for issues where it had set aside resources.

“A classic example is the Jan Oushadalaya (generic drug store) scheme, which both the Health and Medical Education Ministers have been claiming that they will initiate. But nothing has happened so far. This is really unacceptable as this scheme is a one-shot way of ensuring a reduction in out-of-pocket expenses, 70 per cent of which is for medicines,” Ms. Vasan said.

Health Minister U.T. Khader, however, claimed that nearly 80 per cent of the new budgetary health programmes had either been implemented or were in the process of implementation. “We are not proposing any new programmes this year. We will only seek more grants to implement the existing schemes in toto,” Mr. Khader said.