Bhubaneswar, Feb 8: The National Urban Health Mission in the State lagging behind its target and has been quite a failure as not even a single PHC out of the 41 targeted has been established so far, sources said.
The programme was launched two years ago with fanfare at Rourkela, under which seven Community Health Centres (CHC)s and 87 Primary Health Centres (PHC)s were decided from which 46 were to be upgraded and 41 new to be newly constructed. But the ground reality presents a different picture as till now not a single one has been newly constructed while the development and enhancement of grassroot health service and appointment of ANM nurses which was targeted to be 488 from which only 382 have been done.
As many as 36 cities were included in the mission comprising 24 District Headquarters along with Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, Jatni, Sonaguda, Jeypore, Berhampur, Brajrajnagar, Rajgangpur, Barbil, Jajpur road, Chowdwar, Paradip and Rourkela. Six District Headquarters were excluded from this namely Nayagarh, Nuapada,Sonepur, Boudh, Deogarh, and Chhatrapur. As per guidelines 30,000 population based District Headquarters and 50 thousand population based cities have been included in the scheme.
Out of seven CHCs only three have been upgraded to hospital and the other four have not yet functioned, 46 PHCs were to be upgraded but only four PHCs have been up graded, sources said.
While in this regard two months back Bhubaneswar Urban Mobile Health Unit was started but in other cities it has not started yet, sources added.
Most importantly only 10 per cent of the grants has been utilised, said a senior official of the department.
“ In coming years the situation will change and we are focussing on the issue”, he added.
