NEW DELHI: The union budget allocation for health and family welfare is growing - this year it was up by 21.9 per cent making it to Rs 15,291 crores - but it is hardly reflecting on the health indices of the country.

Despite getting huge allocations and ambitious policy planning from the Centre, the states hardly feel inspired which is evident from the utilisation of funds by them. Almost half the states in the country have failed to put the central funds to proper use and some of the health ministry’s flagship programmes like Reproductive and Child Health Scheme (RCH)-II are the worst sufferers.

RCH II aims at reducing maternal mortality ratio (MMR), infant mortality rate (IMR), total fertility rate (TFR), increasing the contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) and complete children immunisation. The government plans to spend Rs 40,000 crore on the second phase of the RCH.

But out of Rs 898.83 crore released to 35 states and union territories by the union government in 2005-06 for RCH II, not even half the amount was spent on these fronts. In fact, the actual utilised money till March 2006, was Rs 386.18 crore. Worse still, some states had below 10 per cent money utilisation, with Nagaland being the most glaring example: Out of Rs 6.61 crore given to the state it could spend none.

Out of the 18 states that barely touched the 50 per cent money, West Bengal was allotted Rs 59.8 crore but used just Rs 3.18 crore, i.e. a mere five per cent. Assam spent six per cent and Manipur nine. And despite cornering the highest funds in the country — a whopping Rs 170 crore - Uttar Pradesh could use only 28 per cent and Bihar used 15 per cent. Incidentally, UP and Bihar have some of the highest occurances of Japanese Encephalitis, polio and other vector borne diseases besides having shameful MMR and IMRs. The IMR in UP is 73/1000 while 62/1000 in Bihar.

“The results are clearly reflecting in their various programmes like population stabalisation and immunisation,” said a health ministry official. “The money is mainly being used on infrastructure development and hardly anything is being passed on to the patients as part of the intervention methods. It’s true that the states are lacking the attitude but it’s also unfortunate that the absorption capacity was not calculated at the planning level,” said a health expert.

Sadly, even big states like Maharashtra could use only Rs 15.98 crore out of allocated Rs 52.8 crore, touching a mere 30 per cent and Kerala which usually has impressive Human Development Indices has spent merely 22 per cent. However, while southern states like AP and Tamil Nadu have traditional better health indices, what surprises is that the Empowered Action Group states like Chhatisgrah and Orissa focusing attention to health. In 2005-06, Chattisgarh utilised about 93 per cent followed by Orissa (90), Andhra Pradesh (87), Tamil Nadu (86) and Haryana (71).

The reason for stunted health care delivery in North East is evident by the poor spending by the states, which shows that despite getting Rs 109.6 crore the eight NE states could just use Rs 21.6 crore. Out of these, Sikkim stands out by having 103 per cent spending. With such a huge gap and lack of co-ordination between the central and state governments in RCH, it would be tough task for the nation to meet the Millennium Development Goals.