Dismal state of Primary Health Centres in India

Primary Health Centres in India were set up with a view to provide healthcare facilities to the poor and rural people. However, they have failed to live up to the objective and expectations with which they were established.

The Primary Health Centres in Karnataka have the provision of giving the contraceptives such as condom and oral pills. But the health centres in K Golahalli and Kumbalgudu in the outskirts of Bangalore are not providing assured services to their patients.

The Primary Health center (PHC) in K Golahalli is the only centre, which covers 20 villages and has two sub centres - one in K Golahalli and the other in Thittahalli. A new one room PHC has opened in Kumbalgudu.

The centre has only four beds and one senior doctor and one nurse, who look after minimum thirty patients a day. The centre opens at 9:00 in the morning but the doctor comes at 11:30 am and patients wait for at least one or two hours daily to get their check up done.

The shortage of resources is prevalent as is the case with most government health centres. In poor states like Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa, expense levels are low while hopes for living well stay high.

The actual problem the Primary Health Centres face is shortage of medicines, necessary drugs that are insufficient to cater to large number of patients and also the low salaries of the doctors.

"I am taking the treatment from a week, every second day I have to come and consult the doctor but she generally comes late and it creates difficulty for other villagers also," said Manjunath, a villager.

He also added that PHC services are not maintained systematically. They don’t even have proper antibiotics to give to the patients.

Shiv Kumar, health inspector in PHC, said, “There are many villagers, who use this PHC for medical check ups, but we don’t have many facilities for the patients.”

He added that every month 400 pieces of contraceptives (Nirodh) and 400 oral pills like Mala D are sent to the PHC by the government to stop unwanted pregnancy.

In the village there are very few, who know that Primary Health Centre gives contraceptive and oral pills free of cost and there is no awareness among the villagers about these pills and contraceptives.

"I have one child and we don’t use condom. I am not aware of that PHC gives contraceptive and oral pills free of cost. But right now I am planning to have one more child," said Suma, a villager’s wife.

"We go to the villages to create awareness among the villagers but we only get six pieces of condoms, if those six pieces get over then we don’t get more for the day," said Shweta, a nurse in the PHC.

Primary Health Centre should be equipped with operation theatre, labour room, observation ward, ambulance, drinking water and a lady doctor. Also, the added function of PHCs consists of providing regular in-patient and outpatient health care services, implementation of family welfare programme, prevention and control of endemic diseases, basic sanitation and immunisation.

Primary Health Centres is the basis of rural healthcare and are made-up to meet the health care requirements of rural population.

In rural India, poverty and low levels of education are the grass root problems and the villagers depend on PHC for their treatment and still the state government can’t take the proper care of these health centres.

However, the practice of absenteeism amongst the doctors in PHC is very high.

Another Primary Health Centre in Kumbalgudu has only two rooms, no wards and no basic facilities.

"Panchayati Raj institution had promised us to give the building but nothing has been done till now," said Sujata, lab technician in Kumbalgudu PHC.

She added, “We don’t even have observation ward where we can do the check ups and no medicines and added that at least K Golahalli PHC has its own building, toilets, good infrastructure but here we don’t even have toilets, no storage for medicines, no water and on top of that we have a doctor, who comes rarely to look after the patients and there are about thirty patients for treatment every day.

“Primary health centre in Kumbalgudu doesn’t have contraceptives and oral pills to give to their patients and also don’t have general facilities for the patients,” she said.

She also added that panchyat of the village is the authority, which looks after the monitoring of the PHC and they are not doing anything for the welfare to the villagers.