No health facilities in 50K villages in state

Aurangabad, July 17:

Out of the 63,663 villages in the state, around 50,000 villages do not have any health facilities. BJP MLA Babanrao Lonikar of Partur has submitted public interest litigation (PIL) informing this fact, in the Bombay High Court. Following this, Aurangabad Division Bench of the Bombay High Court comprising Justice S V Gangapurwala and Justice R N Laddha ordered to issue notices to the chief secretary of the state, secretary of the public health department, health director, Aurangabad deputy director, Jalna’s district collector, and district civil surgeon and Jalna’s medical officer. The next hearing on the PIL will be held after two weeks.

MLA Lonikar submitted the PIL through adv Amarjeetsingh Girase. He mentioned that thousands of people died during the Covid pandemic. According to the national health scheme, one health centre should be provided for a population of 3,000, one primary health centre each for the population of 20,000 and one rural hospital after four primary health centres.

Around 60 percent of the population in Maharashtra live in rural areas. There are 63,662 villages in the state, but it has only 10,638 sub-centres, 1,823 primary health centres, and 276 rural hospitals. It means that around 50,000 villages do not have health centres. Moreover, the condition of the health centres is very bad.

There are 43 primary health centres in Jalna district, of which only 5 has laboratories, but there are no laboratory technicians here. There are 103 posts of the medical officers, but only 49 posts are filled. Out of the 270 posts of male health assistants, 104 are vacant, and 170 posts of female health assistants are vacant. The petitioner has requested that the health department should improve the health machinery in the rural areas.