CARDIAC CARELESSNESS, ADMITS GOVT REPORT

At a time when the government is pushing for a health care plan for Rs 50 crore, a shocking report has come out from Niti Aayog, the government’s policy think-tank, on as many as 16 state and union territories not having any functional cardiac care units (CCUs) in the government hospitals in any districts except the medical college.

The report is reflected in the Aayog’s Health Index, the first annual and systematic tool “to measure national health performance, that identified the task of bolstering cardiac care services as a challenge shared by many states and UTs. The states and union territories listed as not having cardiac care units in their district hospitals are Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Telangana, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Tripura, Andaman and Nicobar, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Daman and Diu.

Himachal Pradesh, the state of union health minister JP Nadda, has the highest proportion of 92% districts having the CCU facilities, followed by West Bengal 77%, Rajasthan 70%, Kerala 64% and Punjab 63%. Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu also have CCUs in public facilities in at least half of their districts.

Health experts involved in the exercise said the assessment excluded medical colleges and examined infrastructure for CCUs - equipment, including ventilators, defibrillators, portable ECG machines, along with drugs, diagnostic tools and staff required for cardiac services in district-level government hospitals.

“Medical colleges are tertiarycare hospitals, which would in any case have cardiac services,” said Daljeet Kaur, a senior programme manager at IPE Global, a management consultancy that helped validate the findings. “The objective was to look for CCUs in district hospitals that would reduce the workload at tertiary- level hospitals.”