Government today said that number of patients suffering from HIV-AIDS have decreased by fifty percent in last decade. There are over two million AIDS patients in the country as compared to that of five millions, ten years ago.

Talking to reporters in New Delhi today the Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said that under the infectious diseases control programme, the government has been able to avert more than three million deaths off communicable diseases. He added that the country has also achieved 68 percent reduction in mortality deaths in past ten years.

Reitrating government’s committment to provide health facilities to every citizen of the country, Mr Azad said that over 250 million US dollars will be spent in coming two years to establish premier Health Institutions in the under developed regions of the country.

Expressing concern over the shortage of Doctors in the country, he said that over ten thousand seats will be added in post graduate medical courses in coming three years. He added that government will spend over thirty million US dollars to create additional infrastructure in the existing state owned medical institutes in order to increase the student intake. He also said that government is planning to fix the Hospital bills by defining the upper and lower limit of the medical charges according to the infrastructure posessed by the institutes.