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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Private plan for rural health care by Sanjay Mandal
The Mamata Banerjee government has initiated an ambitious project to bring specialised health care to rural Bengal, asking private hospitals to set up “super-speciality” units alongside state-run hospitals in the districts.

As a start, the chief minister has taken up with cardiologist and Asia Heart Foundation chairman Devi Shetty a plan to set up six such hospitals that would provide the sort of critical care that is now missing in most of Bengal beyond Calcutta.

These hospitals are expected to offer treatment such as heart surgery and dialysis and diagnostic procedures such as angiography, CT scan and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at affordable rates. They will come up either within the district hospitals’ compounds or nearby, depending on free space on the premises and land availability outside.

Government officials said the new units would be set up on a public-private partnership (PPP) model whose details are yet to be worked out.

Shetty, who began his career in Calcutta before shifting to Bangalore, will hand in a detailed project report within two weeks. Government sources said the district hospitals in Purulia, Birbhum, North Dinajpur and East Midnapore were likely to be included in the list of six.

Other reputable private hospitals will also be sounded out later, and the plan is to extend the programme to subdivisional hospitals in future, they said.

“This is the biggest change in the state’s health policy in years. Earlier, private capital was kept at arm’s length,” a health department official said.

The new government wants to focus on improving rural health care to reduce the avalanche of referrals to Calcutta’s overburdened hospitals — a situation that the chief minister has blamed for the recent spate of baby deaths at the BC Roy hospital.

Mamata has taken personal initiative to appoint PMO bureaucrat Sanjay Mitra as Bengal’s health secretary, with a special mandate to revamp rural health care.

Shetty met Mamata at Writers’ Buildings last week. “We’ll be setting up advanced treatment and diagnostic facilities along with blood banks,” he told The Telegraph today.

“We’ll identify the hospitals and submit a detailed project report to the chief minister in two weeks to work out the modalities. The hospitals are expected to be commissioned in a year’s time.”

The district hospitals and the private units “would be sharing each other’s facilities”, Shetty said. “If a district hospital has a blood bank, the new unit can use it. We’ll provide the facilities they lack.”

He said the patients would be treated at subsidised rates, paid through group health insurance.

Although issues of funds and logistics are yet to be worked out, everyone from health department officials to private hospitals have lauded the initiative as a good first step.

“We are definitely interested, but merely creating infrastructure will not help. The government should ensure that specialist doctors and support staff are posted there (the rural areas),” said S.K. Todi, director, AMRI group.

Another hospital chief, who did not want to be named, said he would wait till more clarity emerged on funding and possible incentives. One entrepreneur asked whether the doctors and paramedics at the new facilities would be employed by the state or the companies. “If they are government employees, accountability might suffer.”

No one in the government would like to see the plan as a way of outsourcing a part of health care, but all insist that it would be a positive development even if it were so.

A few state-run hospitals do have units set up with private help, but these are restricted to basic diagnostic procedures. Private help has never been sought before to provide crucial treatment like dialysis at state hospitals or to set up catheterisation laboratories for angiography.