Bihar’s govt hospitals ailing: CAG

Bihar’s health services remained far from satisfactory in terms of offering the basic medical facilities to people, notwithstanding huge investments from the government, according to the state’s principal accountant general (PAG) Ramawatar Sharma, who released the audit reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) for the year ending March 2020 on Wednesday.

Talking to reporters after laying the reports in the state legislature, Sharma said the audit reports, conducted in the face of Covid-19 pandemic, show that the government hospitals, mainly the district hospitals, suffered serious lack of resources, manpower and planning to cater to the burgeoning load of population. “The sample size has to be restrained owing to the prevalence of the pandemic,” the PAG said.

The report states that district hospitals suffer from shortfall of beds, ranging from 52-92%, as per the India Public Health Standards. “Actual bed strength was not raised to the sanctioned level (by March 2020) despite lapse of more than a decade,” report said, adding that doctors, nurses and other paramedic staff were also very less in number.

“The DHs also did not provide 12 to 15 significant outpatient door curative services like cardiology, gastro, enterology, nephrology, ENT, etc due to shortage of specialist doctors and infrastructure. The objective of providing free drugs to patients could not be ensured, as many as 59% of the OPD patients had to purchase medicines from their own pockets,” the report states.

Sharma said that none of the five DHs (located at Patna, Jehanabad, Bihar Sharif, Hajipur and Madhepura), checked for sampling, had operation theatre (OT) for emergency services. “The shortage of essential drugs in OTs ranged between 64-91%, which indicated possibility of purchase of essential drugs by the patients,” he said, adding that the intensive care unit (ICU) was available at Jehanabad district hospital only, while none of the hospitals had the cardiac care unit (CCU).

The report further states that nine of the DHs, including Patna, did not have any blood bank and the existing blood banks, barring two, had valid license during the period 2014-20.

The report made critical remarks over functioning of the Bihar Medical Services and Infrastructure Corporation Limited (BMSICL) for its failure to supply necessary drugs and medical equipment in the hospitals across the state. “As many as 70 essential drug list (EDL) drugs were not supplied to the hospitals during 2017-18 and 66 EDLs drugs during 2018-19,” the report said.

“The BMSICL could spend only ₹3,103 crore (29%) against the available fund of ₹10,743 crore on different projects. Out of the total 1,097 projects undertaken by the BMSICL during 2014-20, only 187 could be complete, while 523 were still in progress and work on 387 was yet to commence,” said the PAG. Hindustan Times