CHENNAI:The Corporation of Chennai is all set to open four health facilities in the city in the next couple of weeks, including a community hospital in Meenambal Nagar on Cochrane Basin Road.
This hospital in Zone IV (Tondiarpet) is an 80-bedded facility with provisions to attend to emergencies and also has an obstetrics unit available to provide midwife services for women in labour, officials said. “With this facility opened, some of the maternity cases referred to the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital can be handled here,” said a health official.
Senior officials commented that the civic body was looking to set up similar facilities catering to the masses in all zones. “One 100-bedded facility in each zone remains the target and we are slowly progressing towards that though availability of land space remains the biggest obstacle,” a senior official said.
A primary health centre Zone 12 (Alandur) is also one among the four awaiting inauguration. Besides these, Sholinganallur (Zone 15) will benefit from the adolescent counselling centre and a de-addiction centre that is also set to open in the coming weeks. The corporation had set up its first de-addiction centre within the premises of the Communicable Diseases Hospital in Tondiarpet. “The adolescent counselling centre will help teenagers and young adults to battle depression and stress-related illnesses. It will help the underprivileged sections troubled by familial problems predominantly,” said an official.
Despite the setting up of a second de-addiction centre, officials felt that patronage for the facility was low. “The fact is that people struggle to come to terms with the fact that they are addicts. When they do, and in cases where they voluntarily approach us, they fail to hang on for more than a day or two,” said a health official. “Our position is also such that we can only take in patients referred to us. But, people seldom choose a government facility and instead prefer a private de-addiction centre,” reasoned a senior official.