Udupi: Four primary health centres to be shut

The Hindu

• Udupi bracketed with developed districts
• 22 staff nurses transferred to Mysore

 

Udupi 17 May 2011: The issue of staff shortage at primary health centres (PHCs) dominated the general body meeting of the Udupi Zilla Panchayat here on Monday.

 

Raising the issue, Manjunath Poojary said 22 staff nurses serving in PHCs of the district under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) had been transferred to Mysore district. This would create scarcity of nurses because some PHCs in Kundapur did not have medical officers. These nurses were providing basic first-aid treatment. The PHC at Muniyal village would be shut down, he said.

 

MLA Gopal Bhandary said four PHCs would be shut down in the district. He said that development works were being diverted to other districts of the State as the Nanjundappa Committee Report had bracketed Udupi, Dakshina Kannada, and Kodagu districts as developed districts. “The diversion of development works would soon see us in the company of other backward districts,” he said.

 

District Health and Family Welfare Officer Ramachandra Bairy said 83 PHCs, including four from Udupi district, were being shut down.

 

The four PHCs identified in Udupi district were in Muniyal, Hattiangady, Perdoor, and Vaddarse.

 

The PHCs without medical officers in the district were in Gangolli, Alur, Siddapura, Belve, and Bajagoli villages.

 

The basic objectives of NRHM such as reduction of maternal mortality rate (MMR) and Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) had been achieved in the district.

 

Hence 22 nurses had been transferred to Mysore district on humanitarian grounds. But these nurses could be retained in the district by urging the NRHM that they were required to deal with other goals of the mission such as prevention of malaria, chikungunya, dengue, HIV/AIDS, and TB in the district, Dr. Bairy said.

 

Ananth Movady, member, said a poor woman from Scheduled Tribes, who was injured in an accident recently, had been taken to the district government hospital in Udupi.Zilla Panchayat president K. Shankar Poojary, MLCs Kota Srinivas Poojary, and Pratapchandra Shetty were present.