Healthcare Facilities Poor in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh: IIM

These states lag in the availability of Gynecologists, Pediatricians, Surgeons, Physicians and also childcare facilities at the district hospitals.

IIM-Ahmedabad claims that the healthcare facilities provided in the 'BIMARU' states are poor. The acronym 'BIMARU' is used to define underdevelopment and poor social indices in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

The study by Indian Institute of Management (IIM) mainly discussed on the infrastructure, manpower and operational challenges faced by rural healthcare facilities to provide effective services in these states.

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"The findings reveal significant dearth of specialist doctors with their concentration at the district level," said Dr. Shreekant Iyenger, Institute of Law in Nirma University and Dr. Ravindra Dholakiya, professor of economics at IIM -Ahmedabad.

"Moreover, there are severe mis allocations of the specialist doctors and lack of manpower support, equipment and basic infrastructure within the public health system causing serious challenges in effective provisioning of specialist services for maternal and child health care," said the study.

It pointed out that the efforts made by the government for providing additional manpower support for these services are also not giving desired results. They lag in the availability of four specialists namely Gynecologists, Pediatricians, Surgeons and Physicians at Community Health Centers (CHCs) or District Hospitals (DHs).

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"While it is observed that Bihar (34.3%) has a relatively greater proportion of such CHCs, all other states like Rajasthan (8.3%), MP (1.2%) and UP (1%) perform quite poor in terms of presence of all four specialists at CHCs," said the study.

Bihar and UP have only 0.83 and 2.91 specialist doctors per million population in the CHCs, DH and Sub district hospitals (SDHs). While, states like Rajasthan (11.52) and MP (4.36) were in a relatively better condition when compared with national average of 3.98 specialist doctors per million population in CHCs.

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“The percentage of district hospitals having HIV test facility in MP (60.9%) and with ultra-sound facility in Bihar (17.6%) and MP (56.5%) are relatively lower,” it said.

“The percentage of CHCs with new born stabilization units are found to be significantly lower in Bihar (1.43%) and MP (17.4%) and CHCs with new born corners were found to be significantly lower in Bihar (31.4 %) and relatively lower in Rajasthan (66.1%) and UP (74.3%) again as compared to the national average,” it said.

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Source-Medindia