Nine medical colleges are planned to be set up in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh. These colleges will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday (October 25), it is learnt.

He will also inaugurate various development projects worth more than Rs 5200 crore for Varanasi.

However, these nine hospitals are situated in the districts of Siddharthnagar, Etah, Hardoi, Pratapgarh, Fatehpur, Deoria, Ghazipur, Mirzapur and Jaunpur. Of these hospitals, eight Medical Colleges have been sanctioned under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme for “Establishment of new medical colleges attached with district/ referral hospitals” and 1 Medical College at Jaunpur has been made functional by the State Government through its own resources. 

The objective of PMASBY is to fill critical gaps in public health infrastructure, especially in critical care facilities and primary care in both urban and rural areas.  It will provide support for 17,788 rural Health and Wellness Centres in 10 High Focus States. Further, 11,024 urban Health and Wellness Centres will be established in all the States. 

Critical care services will be available in all the districts of the country with more than 5 lakh population, through Exclusive Critical Care Hospital Blocks, while the remaining districts will be covered through referral services.

People will have access to a full range of diagnostic services in the Public Healthcare system through a Network of laboratories across the country. Integrated Public Health Labs will be set up in all the districts.

Under PMASBY, a National Institution for One Health, 4 New National Institutes for Virology, a Regional Research Platform for WHO South-East Asia Region, 9 Biosafety Level III laboratories, 5 New Regional National Centre for Disease Control will be set up.

Under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme, preference is given to underserved, backward and aspirational districts. The Scheme aims to increase the availability of health professionals, correct the existing geographical imbalance in the distribution of medical colleges and effectively utilize the existing infrastructure of district hospitals. Under three phases of the Scheme, 157 new medical colleges have been approved across the nation, out of which 63 medical colleges are already functional.