<i>CCC-run primary health centres stumble</i>
The poor and the low-income people have been deprived of proper healthcare services due to lack of sufficient medicines, human resources and infrastructures at most of the urban primary health centres in the port city.
Financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Chittagong City Corporation (CCC) in the period of 1998-2002 constructed 36 buildings for urban primary health centres with a view to providing healthcare services at a nominal cost to the poorer section of the people in Chittagong. Of the centres, 25 went into operation immediately after their construction at different wards in the port city to provide with the healthcare services, including vaccination and family planning.
The healthcare services at 11 other centres will start soon, sources said.
Each centre is supposed to have a team of 10 including one doctor, one field supervisor, one pharmacist, two health staffs, one nurse, one counsellor, one guard, one maid and one fourth-class employee. But many of the centres are yet to get the full workforce that attributes to the disruption of proper services, said doctors and staffs at the centres.
The centres do not get adequate supply of medicines from the government where each centre is supposed to provide over 31 types of medicines to the patients, including 18 types of tablet, six types of syrup, five types of capsule, one ointment and one drop, they said.
Liton Saha, a pharmacist at South Pahartali Noresh Mallik Urban Health Centre, said the presence of patients at his centre is very poor as roads are in bad shape in the locality.
Liton said the centre that runs without boundary wall has suspended vaccination programme for children for two years as it hardly gets medicines of vitamin or iron for the children.
A physician at the Dewan Bazar Centre, on condition of anonymity, said the supply of medicines against daily demand at the centre is very frustrating.
“The government should increase and ensure the supply of essential medicines particularly for pregnant women and children with critical diseases. Otherwise, we won't be able to cater the need of the patients,” said Dr Rumi Das of Chawk Bazar Centre.
Criminals especially the drug addicts used to reign in after dusk at the Jalalabad Centre in the Oxygen area under Bazyed Bostami Police Station everyday in absence of boundary wall, said an employee of the centre.
Dr Nasim Bhuiyan, one of the two managers of the project, said over two lakh patients got healthcare services in 2007 and the number of patients are on the rise.
“Of the patients, around 50 percent is children with complications of diarrhoea, pneumonia and viral fever while 30 percent women,” he said.
Dr Nasim, however, said the healthcare services hamper on many occasions for lack of sufficient and proper medicines, required number of staffs due to fund constraints.
Dr Selim Chowdhury, chief health officer of the CCC, told The Daily Star that they would send a letter to the government for sufficient fund soon to get rid of those problems.
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