The health sector has a functional bottom-up approach to planning. The centre provides broad guidelines based on national health policies and strategies. The districts have the primary responsibility of planning and implementing their health care activities, be it infrastructure or service development. The centre merely facilities the district effort by providing support, technical as well as resource mobilization. The centre also monitors progress of the districts through an annual health meeting.
Districts conduct their own mid-year and annual reviews.
Development of human resources for management, strengthening the health management information system and conducting evaluations have ensured effective implementation of the managerial processes for health. This would involve training of personnel throughout the system and the provision of data processing equipment. More emphasis has been given to community action in the 8th plan than in the 7th plan. Already over a thousand village health volunteers have been trained and more will be recruited where necessary. They are not substitutes for formal health workers but catalytic agents in an interactive process, to provide health care within their own communities with some simple curative tasks.