Access to basic healthcare service
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: August 31, 2024 -

THERE may be a multitude of issues presently afflicting Manipur, all crying for immediate attention. But the demand for upgrade of the lone 50-bedded government hospital in Jiribam into a full-fledged district hospital is a long overdue one that should have been taken care of by the government of Manipur.

When the denizens of Jiribam district responded to the call given by the District Hospital Monitoring Committee (DHMC) for staging a sit-in demonstration in front of the 50-bedded hospital located at Ningshingkhul on Thursday, one may get the impression that urgency of upgrading the lone 50-bedded government hospital in the district into a full-fledged district hospital with adequate staff and infrastructure has been felt more than ever before in the wake of recent spillover of the now nearly 16 months long Meetei/Meitei-Kuki/Chin ethnic conflict into Jiribam.

Of course, one of the DHMC member did mentioned about going to Silchar Hospital in the neighbouring state of Assam becoming riskier now as they have to travel through long stretches of Hmar and Kuki settlements.

Butthat is beside the point here. What we are trying to wrap our head around is why the lone 50-bedded government hospital in Jiribam has been reduced to a referral point to other hospitals instead of catering to the needs of people coming to seek medical treatment.

More importantly, why there is still lack of adequate staff including technicians and specialist doctors, apart from the required infrastructure and logistics to ensure its proper functioning, even though the state cabinet had approved upgrade of the Jiribam Hospital to a district hospital long ago?

There have also been complaints about doctors posted at the hospital often leaving as they had not much option to provide service due to lack of equipment and infrastructure or simply not reporting for duty as they construe it as some sort of punishment posting and the relevant government department doing nothing about it.

All these are serious issues that warrant immediate attention.

As far as we could remember, while Jiribam was a subdivision of Imphal East district until it became a full-fledged revenue district in 2016, it had a Community Health Centre (CHC) at Babupara and a Primary Health Centre (PHC) at Borobekra.

Later on, the CHC, which was essentially a Rural Hospital, was upgraded to the present 50-bedded Sub-Divisional Hospital (SDH) with construction of a new building at Ningshingkhul, which is located 6 km away from Babupara and the old CHC building was partially converted into an office of Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of the district.

But the funny thing is that it was only after a long time that Dr E Okendro Singh was posted as a regular CMO to Jiribam, and following his recent transfer, the hospital is now being run under a CMO in-charge once again.

In the absence of a regular CMO, who is responsible for the overall operation of a hospital, the aspiration of Jiribam denizens to have a full-fledged district hospital is not likely to be realised anytime soon regardless of the approval given by the state cabinet.

There had been an instance when the Democratic Students' Alliance of Manipur (DESAM) filed a complaint'letter to the Manipur Human Rights Commission (MHRC) seeking intervention in this regard.

In the complaint letter submitted to MHRC way back in January 2021, DESAM had pointed out that the lone 50-bedded government hospital in Jiribam district was existing only in name without any facilities for providing proper medication to the people and the emergency wards of the hospital even faced shortage of cotton wool and gauge.

From the manner in which the denizens of Jiribam had responded positively to the call of the District Hospital Monitoring Committee (DHMC) for staging a protest demonstration to press for upgrading the lone 50-bedded government hospital to a full-fledged district hospital, it seems nothing has been changed since then.

This is so sad because access to health care is being recognised as a fundamental human right and a basic need for people all around the globe today.