Pul Plans a complete face-lift of the Arunachal Pradesh’s Health Services
Itanagar
Arunachal Government plans to complete face-lift of health sector. this was mentioned in the budget speech of chief minister Kalikho pul, on March 23rd.
The rationale behind the complete face-lift of health institutions as proposed through the comprehensive plan proposal by the chief minister is to “deal with health problems at early stage, before it can grow into something serious”.
To provide a complete infrastructure face-lift of all the health institutions across the state – the chief minister plans to phase out all hospital infrastructures built during the union territory days, which will be done in phase manner and in planned way.
As first step, the proposal will outline the basic infrastructure requirements and facilities required in all health care units starting from state level hospitals to sub centres – covering all zonal hospitals, district hospitals, primary health centres and community health centres in the state.
The chief minister insists that to ascertain the critical gaps such as of ambulances, investigation equipment, medicines and other facilities; he would opt for ground visit to have clear picture of the requirements. On any critical situation, decisions would be taken on the spot with the health department to ensure full-fledged facilities in the health centre.
On manpower shortages, the state government has created 2541 posts from sweeper to specialists in the health department. For local people to have preference over the jobs, the recruitment process for the group C&D category will be conducted at district level.
To strengthen all the mechanisms to ensure effective health service, the chief minister has given special attention to the welfare of the grassroots health workers such as ASHA workers and other community health workers.
In the last few years, health indicators in the state have shown poor results against the set target as mandated by the government of India. The health indicator, such as, Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) and Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in Arunachal has increased. The National Health Mission (NHM) target for IMR is 25 by 2017 – but in Arunachal in the previous three years, it has consecutively increased to 31, 32 and 33. The TFR target should be less than 2.5 but the state data hovers on 2.7.
Irony it may seem, the state has no data to on MMR, where the NHM target is 100. Lack of such health statistics will greatly hinder the health planning process, which will have profound effect on service delivery.