New Delhi.Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman introduced the first general budget of the government’s third term from Modi. The Finance Minister made several big announcements in the General Budget 2025 for health services, especially cancer care and access to life saving medicines. In this budget, special emphasis has been laid on making medical facilities cheap and accessible for the poor and middle class.
The most important thing is that the government has decided to completely eliminate the custom duty on ’36 life saving medicines’. These include cancer, HIV, heart disease, rare diseases and drugs related to diabetes. The Finance Minister said, this step will reduce the cost of treatment drastically and ordinary citizens will be able to get quality medicines at cheap prices. According to experts, this can currently reduce the prices of medicines by 15-20 percent.
In view of the increasing number of cancer patients, the government announced a plan to set up a ‘Cancer Day Care Center in all district level government hospitals in the country’. At these centers, facilities like chemotherapy, radiotherapy and consultation will be available to patients at free or minimum cost. Due to this, millions of patients living in rural and remote areas will not have to visit hospitals in big cities again and again. According to the Ministry of Health, a budget of ‘1,200 crore’ has been allocated on this scheme.
To make cancer treatment more cheaper, the government has also announced to include ‘anti-cancer drugs’ in the list of necessary medicines. This will control the prices of these drugs and reduce their maximum retail price in the private sector. Also, custom duty on 6 other ‘life saving drugs’ (such as organ transplant and neurological treatment) has been reduced to five.
