On February 4, Iqbal Singh Chahal, Mumbai's Civic commissioner presented the budget for the financial year 2023-24. This time the budget has been prepared by the administration without an electoral body in place. This means that in due course, any political party that comes to power could reappropriate the allocations, by cutting down the provisions in one sector and adding them to the other. March 31 will be the last date for the sanctioning of the budget. Any changes made to it post that and in the absence of an electoral body, it will be sanctioned by the civic chief, who has the power of seven committees in the BMC.
In comparison to last year, there is a Rs 600 crore difference in the health budget this year. This is because the civic body cut down on the "extra provisions made during Covid which are not needed anymore." This means that the public health budget dropped by nine per cent this year taking the capital expenditure for health to stand at Rs 1,680 crore. The overall budget estimate in health for this year stands at Rs 6,309 crore from Rs 6,933 crore last year. So, of the total budget this year, 13 per cent has been allocated to health as against 15 per cent allocated to health last year.
As per the budget document, resources have been directed toward the building of infrastructure related to healthcare. This includes multispecialty hospitals, maternity homes and hostels. The budget speech by Chahal also addressed the rising threat of hypertension, diabetes and other lifestyle diseases. Some of the new schemes introduced this year include Arogyam Kutumbam under which people over the age of 30 will be screened for diabetes and hypertension in the first phase and those between 15 and 30 will be screened for the second phase.
The budget for this scheme is Rs 12 crore. As per a survey conducted earlier by the BMC, Chahal said that hypertension was found in 34 per cent individuals and diabetes was found in 18 per cent individuals above the age of 15.
By March 2024, the BMC plans to have 270 polyclinics across the city of Mumbai and has proposed to buy three MRI machines worth Rs 25 crore each and three CT scan machines costing Rs 15 crore each for its main civic hospitals in Mumbai. The budget speech by the civic chief also addressed the issue of depleting air quality levels in Mumbai for which RS 25 crores have been allotted. Chahal said the civic body hopes to install power sweepers for dust cleaning, sprinklers to settle the dust on roads and footpaths, vehicle-mounted misting equipment and air purification units, setting up air purifiers in five crowded locations in the city and ionic air purification system for dust mitigation. There will also be a Climate Action plan Cell and waste processing centres, both of which are projects carried forward from the last budget. There will also be a Metropolitan Surveillance unit at Kasturba hospital in Mumbai, the leading hospital which tackled a huge number of Covid cases back during the pandemic times.
