Odisha Gets 358 More Doctors; State Budget For Health Doubled In 3 Years, Says CM

Bhubaneswar: A total of 358 allopathic medical officers, 116 homoeopathic medical officers and 36 homoeopathic lecturers on Friday joined the Odisha government’s Health & Family Welfare Department.

An orientation programme was organised for the new recruits at the convention centre in the Lok Seva Bhawan here.

Congratulating the new recruits through a virtual platform, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik hoped that these appointments will make the healthcare system more robust and effective. “‘Sustha Odisha, Sukhi Odisha’ is our mission and ‘every life is important’ has been the guiding principle of his government,” he said, adding that the objective is to provide quality and affordable health care to all the 4.5 crore people of Odisha.

He further said that the government is committed to providing universal access to quality healthcare services and bringing down the out-of-pocket expenses of the people. “The size of the budget of the Health Department has increased over the years. The budget provision during the financial year, 2019-20 was more than Rs 6800 crore, which has been increased to more than Rs 12000 crore in the year 2022-23. This is more than six per cent of the State Plan. The budget size has in fact doubled in the last three years,” he emphasised.

Bringing attention to the 5T initiative of the government, he said that Transparency, Technology, Teamwork, Time and Transformation are the fundamental principles of our governance model. People are the soul of democracy and every public servant is mandated to serve them with dignity, he underscored.