Odishatv Bureau
Bhubaneswar: Ahead of the panchayat polls likely next year, the Odisha government today decided to operationalise a special fund for Below Poverty Line people afflicted by diseases like cancer from next month. BPL families would receive financial assistance upto Rs three lakh for treatment of critical diseases like cancer, heart problems, kidney ailments and others, official sources said after a high-level meeting chaired by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik here.

"To begin with, Rs 10 crore will be deposited in the Orissa State Treatment Fund, which would be operational from next month," the sources said. The state, according to the 1997 BPL survey, has about 43 lakh BPL families who were eligible to benefit from the new programme. The government also decided to introduce a Management Information System in blood banks to enable people to get blood, a senior health department official said.

"The people can easily get information on the stock of blood in different blood banks through MIS," he said. The government also decided to introduce global monitoring system to monitor the activities of 114 mobile health units working in remote areas. Patnaik directed health officials to conduct Biju Gramin Health Camps in all the 147 assembly segments of the state.

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