The Hindu : Uphill task for Corporation health wing

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 17, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai

Uphill task for Corporation health wing

By Saptarshi Bhattacharya

CHENNAI July 16. The Chennai Corporation has geared up to celebrate World Population Day on Wednesday, but a wide gap has emerged in its services owing to deficiency in infrastructure and lack of expertise in the family welfare sector.

If statistics are any pointer, the birth rate in the city has stagnated at 16.2 per thousand population while the infant mortality rate has been 13 per thousand live births for the past few years.

Faced with shortage of doctors and trained paramedics and a dearth of facilities, the health department now faces an uphill task of bringing the birth rate down to 15 and the IMR to 10 by the year 2006.

Some of the maternity centres handling pre-natal cases have been bereft of facilities such as scan and x-ray, besides others. Seven scan machines out of the 24 installed in as many centres have been out of commission. Health officials said the equipment was purchased from ELCOT in 1994 and had outlived their life span.

Only 25 gynaecologists were managing 39 centres where pre and post-natal cases and deliveries were handled. The department at present has 114 doctors out of a total sanctioned strength of 151.

A list of candidates to fill up 51 posts of doctors (including those for dispensaries) was sought from the employment exchange in July 2001, but the file has not been cleared by successive Commissioners.

The silver lining, however, is that the birth rate and the IMR have been much less than the nationwide index, according to health department officials.

A sudden spurt in thefts at the maternity centres and health posts has also caused concern among authorities. Some of the conservancy staff, who were removed from the Triplicane, Kodambakkam and Mylapore Corporation Zones after induction of Onyx, were posted as security personnel at some of these centres.

But with theft cases reported from many areas, including the centres in Thiruvanmiyur, Haider Ali Garden and Virugambakkam, the civic body decided to revert to the private agency, which was in charge of security at these places earlier.

Though the department receives about Rs. 10 crores annually under various heads from the Central Government, the State Government and the Corporation, the bulk of the money goes towards meeting the salaries of the staff and other non-plan expenditure.

Maintenance of the existing infrastructure has, therefore, taken a backseat.

The doctors at the Family Welfare department are peeved at the lack of research facilities and the absence of a proper recording facility.

``The adverse events following immunisation of a child or the complications during birth are never recorded, though this could help a lot in treatment of any disease at a later stage,'' they say.

Besides, they are also opposed to the Corporation proposal to integrate the family welfare and public health wings to form an urban health care delivery system, which they said would have an adverse impact on patient care.

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