Negatives, and positives, in face of serious challenges

All primary health centres and community health centres to be developed as independent multi-specialty hospitals.” This was one of the main promises in the Congress election manifesto. Two years on, the far-fetched dream remains unrealised and almost forgotten. The out-of-pocket expenditure on health keeps on increasing, even as the shortage of doctors, nurses and even medicines stares at the government.

Though the government has filled the vacant posts of doctor and recruited specialists by relaxing rules, a vital statistic remains — it is serving the entire population with almost the same number of doctors as was being done 40 years ago. Almost one-third posts of staff nurse and ANMs are lying vacant.

In the very first year of the term, Health Minister Brahm Mohindra announced to procure only WHO-certified medicines for government hospitals. There was a free flow of medicines during the SAD-BJP regime, but the quality was low. Under the Congress rule, the quality has improved but the supply is erratic. The government has tried to fix the secondary and tertiary care, but medical colleges are  struggling.

However, the efforts in tackling drug addiction has yielded good results as with the regular supply of medicines and availability of doctors at Outpatient Opioid Assisted Treatment programme, it was successful in bringing a large number of addicts under the de-addiction programme. TNS