The recent death of a 22-year-old pregnant woman at K. Pudur Urban Primary Health Centre (UPHC) has brought into limelight the problem of overburdened UPHCs in the city.
Currently, 31 UPHCs are under Madurai Corporation’s purview. According to the National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) norms, each UPHC must be manned by a medical officer, four staff nurses, a pharmacist, and two hospital workers.
But the K. Pudur UPHC, which is one of the 21 maternity centres, has only two staff nurses and a maternity assistant. Documents procured by a women and child rights activist A. Veronica Mary indicate that there is an increase in patient patronage for the centre. For instance, there has been an 82.74% increase in the number of in-patients to the facility from 277 in 2016-2017 to 1,605 in 2018-2019. The number of outpatients has also registered a 21.50% increase.
With the increased patronage, the understaffed facility is usually overburdened, says a staff nurse. “The two staff nurses have to juggle between day and night shifts and have to work for almost all days in a week. As the weekly off cannot be availed owing to shortage of personnel, we just work for a few hours during our weekly off,” said the staff nurse.
Also, the medical officers have to take care of multiple UPHCs simultaneously, said City Health Officer (in charge) S. Vinoth. According to him, there are seven vacancies to the post of medical officers and 69 vacancies for the post of staff nurses across the UPHCs.
“Since the facilities are overburdened, it increases the possibilities of human error. Also, it is essential that there are sufficient medical staff present at the centres to take the right decisions during the ‘golden hour,’ which is regarded critical for saving lives,” said Ms. Mary.
The Directorate of Public Health is conducting counselling to fill the vacancies, said Mr. Vinoth.
K. Kolandaisamy, Director, Public Health, said that the appointment order for four doctors had been issued and the other three posts would be filled soon. He said the Medical Services Recruitment Board had recruited 3,000 staff nurses and the vacancies would be filled in two weeks.
Authorities from various departments must conduct an audit and amend the NUHM norms to increase the sanctioned medical personnel for UPHCS, said Ms. Mary. “In Madurai, for instance, there is a need to have 120 doctors across the UPHCs to ensure round-the-clock medical services,” she said.
