CPCT Test 5
15 min30 WPM required611 words
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Health services in Madhya Pradesh are delivered through a hierarchically structured network of public health facilities that begins with the sub-centre at the village level and extends through primary health centres, community health centres, sub-divisional hospitals, and district hospitals to the medical college hospitals in the major cities, complemented by a rapidly growing private sector that now accounts for a substantial share of curative healthcare utilisation particularly in urban areas. The state's public health system, which is responsible for providing affordable and accessible healthcare to a population of over eighty million people spread across seventy-two administrative districts including many geographically remote and economically backward areas, has made significant progress in improving key health indicators over the past decade while grappling with persistent challenges of infrastructure adequacy, human resource shortages, and the health consequences of poverty and social disadvantage. The Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, implemented in Madhya Pradesh as the Ayushman Bharat Niramayam Madhya Pradesh scheme, covers a large proportion of the rural and urban poor by providing cashless hospitalisation at empanelled public and private hospitals for a comprehensive package of over one thousand five hundred medical and surgical conditions, eliminating the catastrophic out-of-pocket expenditure that has historically driven poor families deeper into poverty when serious illness strikes a family member. The state has added several categories of beneficiaries over and above those covered by the central government component of the scheme, using state resources to provide health coverage to a wider section of the population. The rapid expansion of the medical college network, with new government medical colleges being established in district headquarters that previously lacked any tertiary care facility, is creating a substantial increase in the annual output of trained doctors and is bringing specialist medical care closer to populations in remote and semi-urban areas. The Mukhyamantri Swasthya Seva Abhiyan conducts regular health camps in remote rural, forest, and tribal areas where regular access to healthcare facilities is severely constrained by distance, difficult terrain, and a shortage of specialist and even general doctors willing to serve in these locations, bringing essential preventive and curative services including early detection screening, dental care, eye check-ups, and referral for specialist conditions directly to underserved communities. Institutional delivery programmes have been among the most successful health interventions in the state, with cash incentives for mothers who deliver in government health facilities under the Janani Suraksha Yojana, free ambulance services for obstetric emergencies under the Janani Express scheme, and the strengthening of delivery rooms and first referral units at community health centres having together dramatically increased the proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel and correspondingly reduced maternal and newborn mortality. The National Health Mission provides the umbrella programme framework and a large proportion of the funding for health system strengthening activities in Madhya Pradesh, including the salaries of auxiliary nurse midwives and accredited social health activists who provide community-level health services and referral linkages at the grassroots level. The Universal Immunisation Programme, which has achieved remarkable improvements in coverage over the past two decades, protects children across the state from a comprehensive schedule of vaccine-preventable diseases including tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis B, measles, rubella, and Japanese encephalitis, with cold chain infrastructure maintained down to the sub-centre level and vaccination outreach through fixed site and mobile sessions ensuring that children in even the most remote villages receive all scheduled vaccines. Telemedicine platforms connecting primary and community health centres with district hospitals and medical college specialists have been expanded significantly since the COVID pandemic demonstrated their potential to overcome the specialist shortage problem by enabling patients in remote areas to receive video consultations and electronic prescriptions without travelling long distances.