Why are all the hospitals in Srinagar not equipped with the facility of AMRIT stores since as on date, only in two major hospitals, namely Super Speciality Hospital ShireenBagh and Bone and Joint Hospital at Barzulla, Srinagar AMRIT stores are established. It is really baffling as to why so much of time is needed for extending this facility at other associated hospitals where sufficient number of indoor and outdoor patients visit for treatment. Like such an adopted policy , the reasons of which are not specific , the very purpose of the scheme gets defeated and the initiatives of the Government and the aim behind introducing such programmes, get into oblivion . AMRIT or Affordable Medicines and Reliable Implants for Treatment as the very name denotes is all about health, long life and medical care and affordability is a flagship programme of the Union Health Ministry launched in the year 2015 .
Jammu and Kashmir, like other parts of the country are expected to be adequately well covered under this scheme which takes care of providing affordable critical lifesaving medicines to treat diseases like cancer, cardiac ailments and similar ailments and providing medical disposables . In addition to these critical medicines, all those medicines are made available at AMRIT stores which are not provided by the hospitals. That speaks all about the vast utility of such selling outlets. Then, why should this scheme not be sufficiently and widely implemented and why should not only in other areas surrounding Srinagar city , even in Hospitals in core areas in Srinagar , opening of such stores taking inordinately more time. How much could the needy public get benefitted by such scheme can be imagined by the fact that more than 6000 drugs, surgical disposables and implants and stents are mandatorily maintained in the inventories of AMRIT stores. That verily speaks for the need of such stores , the best example of a cogent welfare scheme , to be opened not only at all Hospitals eligible under the programme but the concerned authorities taking extra interest in providing all logistics to those who merit setting up of such outlets.
Should any patient or his or her attendant be deprived of life saving , critical and other drugs for reasons of not being in a position to afford when boastfully we talk of development , growth and taking giant strides towards bettering the lot of the living of the people, AMRIT is well designed to address that issue and lighten the burden of the ones who for one or the other reason, remain underserved. Why the Government has not taken any measures to give the fact a wide publicity that the Union Government, through the outlets of AMRIT stores was affording an unimaginable discount of up to more than 60 per cent of maximum retail price on medicines and surgical disposables. Why it is not made adequately known that slightly before the end of the last year as many as nearly 2 crore patients have benefitted by this scheme in Jammu and Kashmir and made a huge savings of Rs. 900 crores on healthcare which they could spend on other alternate needs. It is the duty of all concerned to not only make such wonderful schemes a total success but bring people closer to the benefits accruable and having already benefitted from AMRIT since it was launched in 2015.
When it was officially made known that the Government intended to open AMRIT pharmacies across the Union Territory in almost all the tertiary care institutions, why are ground results depicting not a satisfactory and matching scenario is the moot question.
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