About 6,500 posts in various categories have been created in Jammu and Kashmir under the National Rural Health Mission to offer better health care at the people's doorsteps.

"These posts have been referred to different recruiting agencies and locals of the area would be recruited as class-VI employees in every district," health minister Sham Lal Sharma said today.

He said that all the vacancies of medicos and para-medicos are being filled up on fast track basis to increase manpower in the health institutions.

Several health institutions have been upgraded and equipped with modern diagnostic gadgets to provide better medicare to the people, Sharma said at a public meeting in Budgam, 20 kms from here.

Sharma said every district hospital has been allotted Rs 25,000 for provision of free medicines to people living Below Poverty Line. Patients aged above 65 years would get free treatment in state hospitals, he added.

While announcing Rs35 lakh for Critical Care Ambulance at the Budgam district hospital, the minister said it will have facilities like de-fabulator, ultra-sonography machine and ECG machine.