Five govt hospitals feted under ‘Mission 60’

Bhagalpur, Sheikhpura, Banka, Khagaria and Saharsa were on Friday rated the top five among Bihar’s 38 districts under the state government’s “Mission 60” days programme to strengthen health infrastructure, improve patient amenities and service delivery at district health facilities across the state, health officials said on Friday.

Bhojpur, Arwal and subdivisional hospital at Benipur in Darbhanga district were among the poor performers, said the officials.

Bihar’s additional chief secretary, health, Pratyaya Amrit, gave away prizes to the mentors and internal assessors of the top five districts during a review meeting with all civil surgeons and district programme managers of Bihar in Patna on Friday.

The institutions were judged on three broad parameters, which included hospital ambience, hospital operations and maintenance besides patient amenities.

Signages, clean and good upkeep of toilets, drinking water with reverse osmosis (RO) facilities, proper patient waiting area, mechanism for rounds by doctors, public address system, “May I Help You” counter, and dress code for hospital staff were among the criteria to judge a facility for patient amenities, said the officials quoted above.

Desilting of drains, earmarking of biomedical waste collection area, repair of broken drains, air-conditioners, hospital wiring, besides fire audit, biomedical equipment inventorisation, clean campus, removal of encroachment, repair of boundary wall, cattle trapper at main entrance, repair of internal roads and pavements, earmarking of vehicle parking area, scrap disposal, removal of unwanted vegetation illumination and whitewashing of hospital building were among the other parameters under hospital operation, maintenance and ambience.

“This is just the beginning of improvement in health infrastructure towards making Bihar a role model in the health sector. We want to provide the best medical health care to the masses. We have reviewed the challenges and are going to continue with the all-around improvement of health facilities in the state,” said Amrit.