The Challenges Confronting Public Hospitals in India, Their Origins, and Possible Solutions

Table 6

Deficiencies in functioning of PHCs and CHCs in India.

Primary health centers
PHCs without residential quarter for medical officer	45.5%
PHCs that did not provide 24-hour services	47.3%
PHCs conducting less than 10 normal deliveries in a month	50%
Community health centers
CHCs not performing even normal delivery services	10%
CHC not designated as first referral units (FRUs)	48%
CHCs functioning without an obstetrician/gynecologist	74.8%
CHCs without a functional operation theatre	34.8%
FRUs having blood storage facilities	9.1%
FRUs without 24-hour new born care facilities	23.9%

Source: GOI, 2010 [4]. Note: these statistics are of a time of the beginning of NRHM; there may have been marginal improvement over the period of implementation of NRHM but comparable national level statistics for a later period are not available. Anyhow, it is nobody’s claim that the implementation of NRHM has reduced the workload on public health facilities in bigger urban centers, especially, as almost the entire focus of NRHM has been on improving the maternal and child health services and in that also on improving the rates of institutional deliveries with the objective of reducing the maternal and infant mortality. Unfortunately, even the delivery of these services remains far from desirable and of equivocal quality.