The State Department of Health and Family Welfare, under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, guides and supervises the Health and Family Welfare Programmes in the State. The Principal Secretary to the Government, Health & Family Welfare Department has overall responsibility in the administration and programme implementation. The Principal Secretary is supported by  two additional  Secretaries & one Under Secretary.

Directorate level

         At the Directorate level, the programmes of Health & Family Welfare are implemented, supervised and co-ordinated by the Director of Health and Family Welfare. In the year 1991, a new Directorate of Social Insurance was set up for the implementation of the ESI (Medical benefit) Scheme. There are three Directors i.e. one Director Health Services, one Director Family Welfare and one Director ESI.

             Various Health and Family Welfare Programmes are looked after by one Additional Directors, two Joint Directors, seven Deputy Directors including Malaria, One Joint Controller (F&A) and a number of other officers belonging to various specialties.

District level

          At the District level, the Civil Surgeon in the grade of Deputy Director, is incharge of the health activities. Each Civil Surgeon is assisted by a team of Programme Officers designated as Distt. Family Welfare Officer, Assistant Civil Surgeon, Distt. Health Officer, Distt. Immunisation Officer, Distt. TB/Leprosy Officer. In addition, other officers like Mass Media Education and Information Officer, Assistant Controller (F&A) etc. also join hands to implement various programmes.

Block level

        At the Block level, Senior Medical Officer is incharge of the Primary Health Centre. He is assisted by one to two Medical Officers, one male and one female. Dental Surgeon is also part of the Health Management in some of the block level PHCs. Multipurpose Health Supervisor (Male), Multipurpose Health Supervisor (Female) and Block Extension Educator assist them to supervise the delivery of health services at the peripheral level where Multi Purpose Worker (Male) and Multi Purpose Worker  (Female) provide services of primary health care to the people, on their door-steps.

Primary Level Preventive & Curative Care:

·                   Sub-Centre - There are 2950 Sub-Centres (each for population of approximately  5000 manned by one Male and one Female Health Worker). This is the first contact point with the masses. Manpower deployed there support in implementation of

·                      (i)    Maternal Child Health (Antenatal Check up, Institutional Delivery & Post Natal Check Up).

(ii)          Universal Immunization Programme ( TT for pregnant mothers, BCG, DPT, Polio,          Hepatits-B & Measles).

(iii)         Family Planning: Counselling/Motivation.

(iv)         Management of diarrhoea especially in infants.

(v)          Health Education i.e. educating the community about the various available services.

(vi)         Control of Acute Respiratory Infection especially in infants.

(vii)        Identify the women requiring help for medical termination of pregnancy and refer them to nearest approved institution.

(viii)       Health Survey.

•                     1187 subsidiary health centers (rural dispensaries) have been transferred to department of Rural Development and Panchayats. Where Rural Medical Officers i.e. Service Providers (doctors) have been appointed by the Zila Parishad.

•                     There are 395  Primary Health Centres for every 30,000 population having staff of one Medical Officer, one Pharmacist, one Staff Nurse, one Lab Technician, one Sewadar and one Sweeper. Four bedded institutions providing curative and preventive health care.

•                   There are 129 Community Health Centres for every 1,00,000 population with bed strength of 25/30 beds PHC/CHC providing promotive, preventive and curative health care.

Secondary Level Curative Care:

            Under Secondary Level healthcare services, all type of curative treatment for various diseases is provided. All type of surgeries and other interventions are being carried apart from by-pass and transplantations, which are being carried in the tertiary level institutions (Medical Colleges). In these institutions, all the preventive healthcare services and other disease control programme are being taken care of. Presently, there are 164 secondary level hospitals in the State as per following details.

• There are 19 District Hospitals having bed range of 50-400 beds. these hospitals are situated in all the districts.
• There are 2 Special Hospitals i.e. Special Gynae Hospital Mata Kaushyla Hospital at Patiala having 200 beds and Special Children Hospital at Bathinda having 100 beds.
• There is one Special Mental Hospital at Amritsar having 400 beds, which has been reconstructed recently and is functioning under the name & style of "Institute of Mental Health" Amritsar.
• 35 Sub-Divisional Hospitals are there having bed range of 50-60 beds.

Curative, preventive and promotive services are provided at 2076 Medical Institutions in the State. The details of Medical Institutions is as under:- 

            The sanctioned strength of Medical and Para-medical manpower of the State Health Department includes 379 Senior Medical Officers, 3142 Medical Officers, 285 Dental Doctors,  2975 Pharmacists, 2506 Staff Nurses, 759 Lady Health Visitors, 3631 Auxiliary Nurse Mid-wives, 178 Radiographers and 200 Ophthalmic Officers, 1055 Lab Technicians.

Health Indicators

                All the health indicators in Punjab are better than All India averages.  Life Expectancy is 68.9 years (63.0), Infant Mortality Rate per 1000 live birth is 44 (57), Birth Rate per 1000 population is 18.1 (23.5), Maternal Mortality Rate per1 (2.9).