The Meghalaya government will spend over Rs 250 crore to ramp up medical infrastructure in the State.
Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said the Covid pandemic brought out the shortcomings prevalent in the healthcare sector and during that period, the government took the opportunity to improve it.
Speaking at the inaugural function of the 100 bedded Maternal and Child Health Hospital in Jowai today, the chief minister said the government has already made a concerted effort to upscale infrastructure and strengthen healthcare facilities in the State.
He informed the government has earmarked Rs 150 crore for construction of 300 sub-centres, Rs 12.5 crore for setting up of 10 Integrated Public Health Laboratories (IPHLs) and two critical care blocks at Rs 47.5 crore, where 100 more beds with modern facilities and advance surgery capabilities will be added.
Sangma further informed that the government has renovated and added additional capacity at 80 health facilities over the last one year where close to 1,000 beds have been added to the infrastructure capacity and almost 200 health facilities have been enabled with solar power and energy efficient equipment.
The chief minister also said that Meghalaya is probably the fourth highest spender in the country in terms of the percentage of GDP spent on health sector.
Furthermore, he informed that the State has come up with a recruitment board to address the challenges of overall recruitment of trained personnel especially doctors and specialists.
“Within the next few months, we expect that through this medical recruitment board, all the positions for doctors and specialists will be filled up at the earliest,” he said.
