Born in New Delhi on December 13, 1954, Harsh Vardhan is a physician with a degree from GSVM Medical College in Kanpur. As junior Minister for Health in 1994 he implemented the pilot project of the Pulse Polio Program, which involved the immunization of one million children up to the ages of three, in New Delhi. In 1995, this program was launched nationwide leading to 88 million children being immunized, and on March 28, 2014, India was declared polio-free by the WHO.
In the first tenure of the Modi Government from 2014 – 2019, Dr. Harsh Vardhan was appointed as the Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare and Minister for Science and Technology. (In a cabinet reshuffle later in 2014, Jagat Prakash Nadda took charge of the Health and Family Welfare Ministry.) In 2017 Harsh Vardhan took on the additional portfolios of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change.
Currently, in the Modi 2.0 government, Dr. Harsh Vardhan oversees the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Science and Technology, and Earth Sciences once again. In his review of India’s Ayushman Bharat program, that provides free healthcare insurance to underprivileged citizens, Dr. Harsh Vardhan emphasized the need for integration of the preventive and tertiary care arms, and the need for effective fraud control. He added, “We are committed to leveraging all resources efficiently to ensure that the out-of-pocket expenditure on health is reduced and all citizens can avail of necessary medical services.” He also laid emphasis on the elimination of TB from the country by 2025.
As Minister of Science, Technology, and Earth Sciences, Harsh Vardhan will continue to bolster the several programs planned during his first tenure and which are already in the implementation stage: supercomputers, upgrading infrastructure for weather, other earth sciences-related institutes, and big data initiatives. He announced that a new mission on desalination will be launched soon.