Report on the status of Health Sub Centers
At Seva Setu, our efforts are two-fold in ensuring that existing government infrastructure reaches the last mile: one line of our effort involves hand-holding and providing innovative interventions to make existing infrastructure work better and the other involves strong advocacy to urge relevant stakeholders in improving the existing infrastructure.
In an attempt at our advocacy – we were curious to know how the state’s Health Sub Centers were functioning. The HSC, as envisioned by the National Rural Health Mission, is meant to be the first point of contact by the community for basic healthcare. An Auxiliary Nurse and Midwife (ANM) is supposed to man these clinics and treat and dispense non-critical cases, referring the critical ones to the Primary Health Centers. These centers are normally located in every panchayat as against the PHCs, which usually cover one block. By the design of it, it rightly should reduce the load of footfalls happening at a PHC.
When we went around to see what’s going on, we found a different story. Of the 15 HSCs we visited in a span of 2 weeks recently, we noticed 13 of them to be closed. On speaking to the locals there, we realized this has been the case for a long while now.