In 2005, nitish kumar became the chief minister of Bihar. At that time there were 6 government medical
colleges and 2 private medical colleges in the state. After the arrival of Nitish, the number of medical colleges
has increased to 20 in 15 years. Meanwhile, government of India's AIIMS has also opened in Patna. Due to the
opening of new medical colleges, about 1200 MBBS seats have increased in Bihar. However, these seats have
increased more in private colleges than in government colleges.
Health care is poor in Bihar...
Huge shortage of PHC centers- The number of villages in bihar is 44874, whereas there are around 1500 PHC
centers in the entire state. If we look at the number of villages, on an average there is one PHC center in every
30 villages. If we look at it geographically, 29 villagers will have to cover a distance of at least 5 kilometers to
reach their PHC centre. However, even where there are PHC centres, there is a severe shortage of manpower.
According to the recent data of central agency NHM, only 496 out of 1484 PHC centers in bihar are working
24/7. The number of PHCs where three nurses are posted is only 105. According to government data, General
Duty Medical Officers are deployed only at 148 PHC centers in bihar, whereas in the neighboring state
Jharkhand this number is 115.
The condition at the district level is still bad - 36 out of 38 districts in bihar have district hospitals, the condition
of which is still bad. According to NITI Aayog, there should be at least 22 beds in the district hospital for every
1 lakh population in Bihar. However, in bihar this number is 6. CAG had presented a report regarding health
services in the assembly in 2022. In this, the condition of all the district hospitals of bihar was said to be bad.
CAG had said that 59 percent of the patients were not provided free medicines by the district hospitals.
According to CAG, patients coming to 12 departments like Cardiology, Gastro, Enterology, Nephrology, ENT
etc. in the district hospitals of bihar do not get proper treatment, which is unfortunate. The condition of testing
in government hospitals is also very bad. According to CAG, there was no operation theater in the district
hospitals of patna, Madhepura, Hajipur, Jehanabad and bihar Sharif, due to which people had to go from
government hospitals. There was also a shortage of blood banks in these hospitals. There was no blood bank
facility in the government hospitals of patna and Darbhanga.
click and follow Indiaherald WhatsApp channel