Primary health to receive a boost with the inauguration of the first RCH camp

Primary health to receive a boost with the inauguration of the first RCH camp
SREELATHA MENON

NEW DELHI, JAN 17: A new experiment in boosting primary health care is all set to begin on January 31, when Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee inaugurates the first Reproductive Child Health camp in Lucknow. These camps will be held in 10 primary health care centres in selected districts of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar and Rajasthan every two months.

Union Health Minister C.P. Thakur told The Indian Express that these camps -- primarily an extension of the family welfare programme -- will concentrate on the health of women and children. It will provide an opportunity to extend expertise, diagnostic and surgical facilities and all other basic infrastructure which is otherwise not available in primary health centres, to the people of the region.

This year, the camps will be held in 10 centres across 102 districts, meaning a total of 10,200 primary health centres will be covered.

Asked how long these camps can act as crutches to the almost non-existent primary health care facilities in the centres, Thakur and his Joint Secretary Gautam Basu said that such a scheme was needed not only to fulfill a demand but even to create it. Presently, people are not even aware of the need of basic health care facilities in far-flung areas. They will ask for it only after they are exposed to these facilities. Once the demand is created, the fulfillment will automatically follow.

The camps will also lend some kind of regularity to assessing health care since for two days every other month, NGOs, public sector organisations and personnel from bigger hospitals in the district will visit the centres and provide immunisation, check ups, blood tests, scanning and birth control surgeries.

The camps are part of the five-year RCH programme, which is funded by the World Bank and the European Commission. Though the programme, which started in 1997, is due to end next year, the Health Ministry claims it will keep the scheme going. Asked how it planned to keep the camps going once the funding from the WB and EC ends, Basu asserted that if the programme shows good results, funds would come automatically. He pointed out that there has been a 20 per cent increase in the allocation of funds for health in every five-year plan. There was a rise of Rs 3,500 crore in the current plan, a rise of Rs 2,900 crore in the previous one and a rise of Rs 2,450 in the one preceding it, he added.

Thakru stressed that while the five underdeveloped states would receive funds to hold the camps, developed states in the south have been asked to keep their primary health care centres working round the clock.

The RCH camps are modelled on two similar projects being carried out by multilateral funding agencies in UP and Maharashtra. Incidentally, the inaugural camp in Lucknow will coincide with the fourth Health Mela to be held there.