A review meeting of the National Rural Health Mission is being held in New Delhi today. It will mainly focus on continuing improvement in strengthening of the public health service system and increasing access to health care in rural areas.

The meeting was inaugurated by Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. Enhancing health infrastructure and human resources, strengthening of the Accredited Social Health Activist, ASHA programme and other community processes will also be discussed during the deliberations being held under the underlying theme of developing healthy villages to create a healthy nation.

AIR Correspondent reports that the National Rural Health Mission, NRHM was launched in 2005, to provide accessible, affordable and accountable quality health services to the poorest households in the remotest rural regions. Under the NRHM, the difficult areas with unsatisfactory health indicators are classified as special focus States to ensure greatest attention where needed.

The thrust of the Mission is on establishing a fully functional, community owned, decentralized health delivery system with inter sectoral convergence at all levels, to ensure simultaneous action on a wide range of determinants of health like water, sanitation, education, nutrition, social and gender equality.