Union Govt to Fund State Health Services; Panjab Tops Education Survey

The Indian Union Ministry of Health and Family welfare approved supplementary funding of USD 2.7M for Panjab under the National Health Mission (NHM) for the financial year 2025–26. The additional funding aims to boost nutrition support for tuberculosis patients, promote innovative public health campaigns, and strengthen digital mental health infrastructure across the state. With the latest approvals, Panjab's total NHM allocation for 2025–26 now stands at USD 215M, which includes both previously sanctioned funds and the newly approved supplementary proposals. Meanwhile, in Panjab, there are only 45 psychiatrists for the state government’s 542 Outpatient Opioid Assisted Treatment (OOAT) clinics. Amid shortage of psychiatrists, the Panjab Health Department has decided to train Medical Officers in basic psychiatry to do their job and effectively run the OOAT clinics. Psychiatrists perform a host of jobs, like monitoring and adjusting opioid dosages, approving new patient registrations and authorizing home dosages. In other news, Panjab has emerged as the top performer in the National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2024, said Harjot Singh Bains, Minister of School Education. NAS selects students from Classes 3, 6, and 9 as samples to evaluate overall education outcomes. Bains said Panjab stood first with 80 marks in the Class 3 ranking, surpassing Himachal Pradesh (74) and Kerala (73). Bains added, in 2025, 845 govt school students qualified the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test while 265 students successfully cleared the Joint Entrance Examination. In an initiative to promote Panjabi as the mother tongue at both national and international levels, the Punjab State Education Board (PSEB) has introduced the International Punjabi Boli Olympiad as an annual event. Concurrently, Delhi University plans to introduce a course on Sikh martyrdom for all undergraduate students, focusing on how the Sikh community emerged in response to religious persecution and imperialist oppression during the Mughal period and later during foreign invasions. The course will be offered by the Centre for Independence and Partition Studies as a four-credit generic elective based on Undergraduate Curriculum Framework, 2022, making it accessible to students across disciplines (earlier coverage).