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Ministry

Ministry of Health and Family Welfare

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is the Government of India's apex department for public health. It runs national disease and immunisation programmes, funds the state-delivered National Health Mission, and owns the Ayushman Bharat architecture — the world's largest government health-assurance scheme. Working through two departments and bodies such as the National Health Authority and the Indian Council of Medical Research, it is the institution that sets India's health policy and steers its pandemic response.

Updated

Headquarters
Nirman Bhavan, New Delhi
Departments
2 (Health & Family Welfare; Health Research)
Budget 2026-27
₹1,06,530 crore
Flagship
Ayushman Bharat (world's largest health-assurance scheme)
Government health spending
1.43% of GDP in 2022-23 (1.48% on new GDP series); out-of-pocket 43.4% of total health spending (NHA 2022-23)
Coverage since 194724 recorded events ·96% from official & primary sources
1945–1949: 1 event1950196019701980199020002005–2009: 2 events2010–2014: 2 events20102015–2019: 3 events2020–2024: 7 events20202025–2026: 9 events

Role

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare sets national health policy and runs the programmes that sit above India’s state-delivered health systems. Health is constitutionally a state subject, so the Union ministry works mostly through money and standards: it co-funds the National Health Mission with the states, runs national disease-control and immunisation programmes, regulates drugs through the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, sets medical- education norms via the National Medical Commission, and funds biomedical research through the Indian Council of Medical Research. It operates through two departments — Health and Family Welfare, and Health Research.

Its largest single undertaking is Ayushman Bharat, the umbrella under which the National Health Authority runs the PM-JAY insurance scheme, the network of Ayushman Arogya Mandirs for primary care, and the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission. The ministry is also the government’s lead institution for epidemic surveillance and pandemic response, a role tested severely during COVID-19 and central to India’s engagement with the World Health Organization’s pandemic- preparedness framework.

The constitutional position, and what follows from it

“Public health and sanitation, hospitals and dispensaries” is an entry in the State List of the Seventh Schedule. A district hospital is a state hospital, its doctors are state employees, and its budget is a state budget. What sits on the Concurrent List is narrower and specific: medical education, the prevention of infectious disease spreading between states, and the adulteration of foodstuffs and drugs.

That allocation explains almost everything about how the Union ministry behaves. It cannot direct a state health system, so it operates three levers instead:

  • Co-funding. Centrally sponsored programmes carry a stated Union–state funding ratio and conditions attached to the Union’s share.
  • Standards and licensing. Drug approval, medical-device regulation and the norms for medical colleges are national, so a national regulator binds state institutions without commanding them.
  • Data and surveillance. Disease notification and reporting systems run nationally because pathogens do not observe the Seventh Schedule.

The money route

The National Health Mission is the main channel and has two halves — a rural mission launched in 2005 and an urban one added in 2013, since run under a common frame. It funds the state health workforce, facility upgrades, the community health-worker cadre and programme delivery, against state programme implementation plans agreed each year. Because it is a matching-share programme, the Union’s contribution shapes state spending well beyond the transferred amount itself — the mechanism described more generally in the brief on fiscal federalism.

The regulators the ministry answers for

  • The National Medical Commission, created by statute in 2019 to replace the Medical Council of India, regulating medical education, registration and professional standards.
  • The Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, the national drug authority under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, which approves new drugs and clinical trials and, with state licensing authorities, oversees manufacture and sale. The split between central approval and state licensing is a recurring source of enforcement variation.
  • The Indian Council of Medical Research, the apex biomedical research body, which sets ethics guidelines as well as funding research.
  • The Food Safety and Standards Authority, which sits under this ministry and regulates food standards nationally.

Surveillance and preparedness

Outbreak detection runs through an integrated disease-surveillance programme and its digital successor, with the National Centre for Disease Control as the technical institution. The structural weakness is the same one the funding arrangement creates: reporting depends on state systems of very different capacity, so national surveillance is only as fast as its slowest reporting unit. Pandemic preparedness is consequently a federal coordination problem as much as a scientific one — and the parts of it that are about hospital capacity, workforce and financing are tracked in the brief on India’s health system.

Desk maintained by IndiaStand editorial cycles. Officeholders are transient; this dossier tracks the institution.

Timeline since 1947

  1. reference

    Ministry of Health constituted

    Health became a Union portfolio at independence, later expanded to Health and Family Welfare.

    source 1

  2. reference

    National Rural Health Mission launched

    The flagship programme to strengthen rural public-health systems, later folded into the National Health Mission.

    source 1

  3. reference

    Department of Health Research created

    A second department was carved out to house biomedical research, with the Indian Council of Medical Research under it.

    source 1

  4. reference

    NRHM subsumed into the National Health Mission alongside a new urban sub-mission

    The National Urban Health Mission was added as a sub-mission and the rural mission was rechristened, giving the ministry a single umbrella — the National Health Mission — through which it co-funds state health systems in both rural and urban India.

    source 1

  5. reference

    AYUSH separated into its own ministry

    Traditional-medicine systems (Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, Homeopathy) were moved out into a standalone Ministry of AYUSH.

    source 1

  6. reference

    National Health Policy 2017 adopted

    Set a target of raising public health spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2025 — a target that remained unmet as of the mid-2020s, with combined central and state government health spending around 1.8% of GDP in 2021-22 per PRS Legislative Research.

    source 1

  7. reference

    Ayushman Bharat launched

    The first Health and Wellness Centre opened in April and PM-JAY, the ₹5-lakh insurance cover, launched in September 2018.

    source 1

  8. official

    National Medical Commission Act, 2019 replaces the Medical Council of India

    Act 30 of 2019 dissolved the Medical Council of India and created the National Medical Commission with four autonomous boards, transferring medical-education standards, licensing and college permissions to a nominated statutory commission under the ministry.

    source 1

  9. analysis

    COVID-19 second wave and oxygen crisis

    The March–May 2021 wave overwhelmed hospital and medical-oxygen supply chains, driving later investment in oxygen and hospital infrastructure.

    source 1

  10. official

    Pan-India COVID-19 vaccination rollout begins

    The nationwide vaccination drive was launched on 16 January 2021, run through the ministry's programme machinery; by the 2021-24 reporting period the ministry recorded about 220 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses administered under the National Health Mission.

    source 1source 2

  11. official

    Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission launched nationwide

    The ministry stood up a unified digital health layer — health IDs, registries and electronic health records intended to interoperate across providers — placing it under the National Health Authority alongside PM-JAY.

    source 1source 2

  12. official

    PM-ABHIM created with a ₹64,180 crore health-infrastructure outlay

    The Pradhan Mantri Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission was set up as a centrally sponsored scheme with some central-sector components, carrying an outlay of ₹64,180 crore for 2021-22 to 2025-26 for block public health units, integrated public health laboratories and critical care hospital blocks.

    source 1

  13. official

    National Sickle Cell Anaemia Elimination Mission begins screening

    The ministry launched a national screening mission for sickle cell anaemia in tribal and high-burden districts; it reported over 2.61 crore individuals screened in the 2021-24 National Health Mission review period.

    source 1

  14. official

    U-WIN piloted to digitise routine immunisation records

    Built on the Co-WIN stack, U-WIN was piloted to track every routine immunisation event for pregnant women and children nationally — extending pandemic-era digital registry infrastructure into the Universal Immunisation Programme.

    source 1

  15. official

    Cabinet approves PM-JAY cover for all aged 70 and above

    On 11 September 2024 the Union Cabinet approved ₹5-lakh cover for all seniors aged 70+ irrespective of income, to be issued via a new distinct card (later launched as the Ayushman Vay Vandana Card).

    source 1

  16. official

    Medical colleges reported doubled since 2014, from 387 to 780

    The ministry told Parliament that undergraduate medical seats rose from 51,348 to 1,15,900 and postgraduate seats from 31,185 to 74,306 over the same period — the sharpest expansion of medical-education capacity the ministry has regulated.

    source 1

  17. official

    PMSSY tertiary-care build-out reaches 22 new AIIMS and 75 college upgrades

    Under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana the ministry reported establishing 22 new AIIMS and upgrading 75 government medical colleges to close regional gaps in tertiary care and medical education.

    source 1

  18. official

    Cabinet apprised of National Health Mission achievements for 2021-24

    The ministry reported engaging over 12 lakh additional healthcare workers under NHM between FY 2021-24, about 220 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses administered, and 1.72 lakh Ayushman Arogya Mandirs operational by FY 2023-24.

    source 1

  19. official

    TB incidence reported down from 237 to 195 per lakh between 2015 and 2023

    In the same NHM review the ministry reported TB mortality falling from 28 to 22 per lakh over 2015-2023, with 1.56 lakh Ni-kshay Mitra volunteers supporting over 9.4 lakh patients under the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyan.

    source 1

  20. official

    1,77,906 Ayushman Arogya Mandirs reported operational

    As of 30 June 2025 the ministry reported 1,77,906 sub-health centres and primary health centres upgraded into Ayushman Arogya Mandirs delivering 12 free comprehensive primary-care service packages.

    source 1

  21. official

    Union Budget 2026-27 allocation of ₹1.06 lakh crore

    The ministry was allocated ₹1,06,530.42 crore, about 10% above the revised estimates of 2025-26.

    source 1

  22. official

    National Health Accounts 2022-23 released

    The ministry's tenth NHA estimates put government health expenditure at Rs 3.85 lakh crore, or 1.43% of GDP (1.48% on the new GDP series), in 2022-23; government spending rose to 43.7% of total health expenditure while out-of-pocket spending fell to 43.4%, from 64.2% in 2013-14 (it had dipped to 39.4% in the pandemic year 2021-22).

    source 1

  23. official

    NFHS-6 fact sheets released

    The sixth National Family Health Survey (2023-24, about 6.79 lakh households in 715 districts) reported institutional deliveries up to 90.6%, full immunisation to 87.1%, under-five stunting down from 35.5% to 29.3%, household health-insurance coverage up from 41% to 60.2% and fertility steady at 2.0. Anaemia was not reported; the ministry said in August that anaemia prevalence would come from a separate ICMR survey using venous blood.

    source 1source 2

  24. official

    PM-JAY marks eight years at Arogya Manthan 2026

    The ministry reported PM-JAY covering more than 60 crore beneficiaries, over 13 crore hospital admissions worth more than Rs 2 lakh crore, over 49 crore Ayushman cards, and about 98 crore ABHA digital-health IDs with over 121 crore linked records; it launched an auto-adjudication framework for claims and a secure data environment.

    source 1

Frequently asked

What is Ayushman Bharat and how much does India's PM-JAY health scheme cover?
Ayushman Bharat is the ministry's flagship, launched in 2018 as two arms. The first is primary care: Health and Wellness Centres, since renamed Ayushman Arogya Mandirs, upgraded from existing sub-health and primary health centres to deliver 12 free comprehensive primary-care packages — 1,77,906 were reported operational as of 30 June 2025. The second is PM-JAY, launched September 2018, which provides Rs 5 lakh of hospitalisation cover per family per year at empanelled public and private hospitals. Cover was extended on 11 September 2024 to everyone aged 70 and above regardless of income, through a separate Ayushman Vay Vandana Card. As on 30 June 2026 the scheme had authorised 12.69 crore hospital admissions worth Rs 1.92 lakh crore through 37,413 empanelled hospitals; at its eighth anniversary in September 2026 the ministry put beneficiaries covered at more than 60 crore and Ayushman cards issued at over 49 crore. A third layer, the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, was added in September 2021 to carry health IDs, provider registries and electronic records — about 98 crore ABHA IDs by September 2026; it sits with PM-JAY under the National Health Authority. official · as of 2026-10-07 · source 1 source 2 source 3 source 4 source 5
How much does India spend on public health as a share of GDP?
Government health expenditure — central and state combined — was 1.43 per cent of GDP in 2022-23 (1.48 per cent on the new GDP series), according to the ministry's National Health Accounts estimates released in May 2026, up from 1.15 per cent in 2013-14; it had touched 1.84 per cent in the pandemic year 2021-22. Out-of-pocket spending was 43.4 per cent of total health expenditure in 2022-23, down from 64.2 per cent in 2013-14. The National Health Policy 2017 set a target of 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2025; that target was not met. The gap is structural rather than incidental — health is a state subject, so most public health spending is state spending, and the Union ministry's own allocation is Rs 1,06,530.42 crore for 2026-27, about 10 per cent above the revised estimates for 2025-26. The Centre's principal lever is co-funding state health systems through the National Health Mission, alongside centrally driven capital programmes such as PM-ABHIM, set up in October 2021 with an outlay of Rs 64,180 crore for 2021-22 to 2025-26. official · as of 2026-10-07 · source 1 source 2 source 3 source 4
What is Ministry of Health and Family Welfare?
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is the Government of India's apex department for public health. It runs national disease and immunisation programmes, funds the state-delivered National Health Mission, and owns the Ayushman Bharat architecture — the world's largest government health-assurance scheme. Working through two departments and bodies such as the National Health Authority and the Indian Council of Medical Research, it is the institution that sets India's health policy and steers its pandemic response.
When was Ministry of Health and Family Welfare established?
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare was established 1947.
What does Ministry of Health and Family Welfare do?
Its remit covers National health policy and disease-control programmes, The National Health Mission (funding state health systems), Ayushman Bharat — PM-JAY insurance, Arogya Mandirs, the Digital Mission, Medical education and professional regulation (via the National Medical Commission), Drug regulation (CDSCO) and biomedical research (ICMR), Epidemic surveillance and pandemic preparedness.
What is the latest on Ministry of Health and Family Welfare?
As of 2026-10-07: PM-JAY marks eight years at Arogya Manthan 2026. The ministry reported PM-JAY covering more than 60 crore beneficiaries, over 13 crore hospital admissions worth more than Rs 2 lakh crore, over 49 crore Ayushman cards, and about 98 crore ABHA digital-health IDs with over 121 crore linked records; it launched an auto-adjudication framework for claims and a secure data environment.

Official sources

The government's own pages for this institution — go straight to the primary.

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