Hyderabad: Despite a whopping amount allocated for health in Andhra Pradesh, the state has recorded the highest in Infant Mortality Rate among other southern sates, and now the rate is stuck at 62 per 1000 live births for the past 15 years.

This is being seen as a very slow rate and perhaps will take another decade to touch the national average of 41. This will no doubt push Andhra Pradesh back in the achievement of the millennium development goals targeted for 2015.

Now, what is perhaps needed as an urgent remedy is the establishment of social security instruments that will take care of the poor, and elicit assistance from private healthcare providers to take the public health objectives forward. A health reform strategy is on the anvil which will seek to improve the health condition of all, enable the reach of the public to better healthcare, and ensure that health care costs do not bore a hole in the household income.