Poor healthcare facilities and the concentration of the available facilities in the district headquarters continues to haunt the people of Kalaburagi district despite the efforts of the government to improve the facilities through the National Rural Health Mission and other programmes.
The latest Human Development Report of the district for 2014 provides a picture of the continuing neglect of health-care facilities.
Besides the government hospitals in all the taluk headquarters, there are 88 Primary Health Centres and 15 Community Health Centres and 330 Sub-Centres in the district.
Apart from this, there are 114 private hospitals in the district and 61 per cent of them are located in Kalaburagi. For people living in rural areas, access to quality health care is difficult. The population per Primary Health Centre was more than 25,000 in all taluks.
On an average, one centre serves the population of 10 villages in the district. In Chincholi, one centre covers about 15 villages. The inadequate rural transport further reduces the access to health facilities. There is also an acute shortage of referral institutions in the district and as against the required number of 20 Community Health Centres, only 15 are functioning in the distrct. As per the norms, there should be one Community Health Centre for every four Primary Health Centres.
Of the 15 Community Health Centres, four are in Chittapur taluk.
The report also said that the bed-population ratio was very low in the district and it was 79 per every lakh persons in the district. The bed occupancy rate was also low at 25 per cent due to the inadequate availability of other facilities.
There were also high vacancies in the government hospital and as against the total sanctioned posts of 266, only 149 were working and 44 per cent of the posts were vacant.
Anti-Natal Care (ANC) was also not available and as per the report only 91 per cent of the registered pregnant women received the care and only 79 per cent of pregnant women received full ANC facilities including the TT injections and other medicines. The report said that 53 per cent of pregnant women suffered from anaemia and only 74 per cent of them were provided supplementary nutrition. However, institutional deliveries had gone up from 49 per cent in 2002 to 99.4 per cent in the district.
