PATNA, Feb. 17 -- Health minister Mangal Pandey on Monday said in the Vidhan Sabha that in the coming years the district hospitals would be developed as super speciality hospitals and block level hospitals as speciality hospitals, critical care facilities would be available in the Sadar hospitals and more appointments would be made to provide quality services to the masses without having to travel to distant places. The minister was giving the government reply after debate on the Rs.21,270.40-crore budgetary demand of the health department for 2026-27, which was passed by voice vote. The Opposition, which consistently slammed the government for poor healthcare and inadequate financial provision, later staged walkout as the treasury benches started drawing comparison with the pre-2005 status. "Bihar spends over 6% of its budget on health, which ranks it among the few top-ranking states and the Opposition should do its homework well before making statements on the floor of the House. The statistics vouch for the vast improvemebt, with the infant mortality rate (IMR) dropping to 23, neonatal mortality rate falling to 18 and mortality of children below five years reaching 27 (all better than the national average as per 2023 SRS)," he added. Pandey said that the maternal mortality rate has also fallen to 104, but in keeping with the Sustainablr Development Goals (SDG), it has to be brought further down to 70 by 2030. "The total fertility rate (TFR), which was 4.2 in 2005, came down to 2.8 due to coordinated efforts, while vaccination coverage has reached 93%," he added. The minister said that the Central dashboard of the Drug and Vaccine Distribution Management System (DVDMS) has Bihar as the top ranking state for the last 17 months in terms of procurement, storage, distribution, and inventory management of medicines and vaccines across various health facilities, while the coverage of Ayushman card has reached 16.9 million families and 41.4 million beneficiaries. "Till 2005, Bihar had just six government medical college and three in the private sector, while now the number has reached 27 in just 20 years of the NDA government and in the coming 3-4 years the number would go up to 46. There will be one in every district, while the capacity and facilities of all old medical college hospitals are being significantly improved. Besides, nursing, para-medical, pharmacy and other colleges have also come up in large numbers and more are in the people line to cater to growing need of manpower," he added....