Source: PIB
Context: Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda chaired a high-level review meeting in New Delhi on 1 August 2026 to assess a nationwide expansion framework for Project SARATHI across central government hospitals and medical institutions.
What It Is
- Project SARATHI — Students’ Alliance for Responsible Action to Transform Healthcare Institutes — is a youth-led, volunteer-driven patient assistance initiative that deploys trained student volunteers across public hospitals to provide non-clinical navigation, guidance and mobility assistance, humanising hospital environments and easing non-medical loads on clinical staff.
- Nodal Ministry: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).
- Platform Integration: Integrated with the MY Bharat (Mera Yuva Bharat) digital portal of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports for volunteer registration, orientation, attendance tracking, performance monitoring and certification, and for ABHA ID creation.
- Aim: to improve the overall patient experience in high-volume public hospitals through compassionate non-clinical support, while constructively engaging youth in civic duty, community service and healthcare empathy.
Key Features
- Non-clinical patient support: volunteers assist patients and attendants with hospital layout navigation, wheelchair and stretcher mobility, OPD desk registration, and locating diagnostic laboratories.
- Strict guardrails on responsibilities: volunteers provide purely supportive services and undertake no clinical, medical or administrative duties — a safeguard explicitly discussed at the review, since the risk of role creep in understaffed hospitals is real.
- Integration with MY Bharat: onboarding, attendance logging, performance tracking and certification through the MoYAS platform.
- Digital health enablement: trained volunteers help visiting patients create Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) IDs and navigate digital health applications, speeding up registration queues.
- Low-cost, high-impact model: draws on local NSS units, nursing trainees and youth volunteers, offering a scalable framework to improve public hospital satisfaction.
Related Framework
- MY Bharat (Mera Yuva Bharat) — autonomous body launched 31 October 2023 under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports; the National Youth Corps pays volunteers a monthly honorarium.
- National Service Scheme (NSS), 1969 — the older student volunteering programme under the same ministry.
- ABHA — a 14-digit health account number under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (2021), implemented by the National Health Authority.
- PGIMER Chandigarh — an Institution of National Importance established in 1962, under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
