BHUBANESWAR: The State Government might claim to have made huge strides in upgrading healthcare infrastructure and advancing services to the people in 2014, but the public health challenges that Odisha had to deal with through out the year have exposed the failings.
Jaundice, dengue, cholera and encephalitis took a heavy toll on the people across districts as preventive health and surveillance systems were caught napping. The jaundice or Hepatitis E outbreak, which has persisted in Sambalpur city since mid-2014 and taken an acute shape in the later part of the year, has laid bare the fault lines not only in the Health and Family Welfare Department but also other Government departments and agencies.
As the year comes to an end, jaundice has taken the entire city in its grip, officially claiming 17 lives (unofficial sources put the number at over 30), and over 1700 affected as of now. While the Government has claimed that the situation was slowly getting under control, the fact that the disease was let to spiral, since the outbreak was first noticed around June, has raised questions on the efficacy of the preventive or surveillance mechanisms.
The Sambalpur outbreak was caused by drinking water contamination due to the dilapidated state of decades old pipeline system in the city. Delayed action towards repairing the pipelines and sensitising people led the outbreak to almost an epidemic situation.
The Sambalpur incident has also put the glare on most of the other cities and urban areas of the State. Cities like Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Berhampur are also managing with pipelines which have not been changed since several decades. Sporadic viral hepatitis outbreaks have become annual affairs in other cities which can also take Sambalpur-like shape or even worse. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has announced `160 crore for overhauling the drinking water supply system in Sambalpur. Similar grants are needed in all other cities and should be executed expeditiously.
While jaundice hogged the headlines in the latter part of 2014, the spread of Dengue in the industrial hub of Kalinganagar showed that no lessons were learnt from the Angul industrial belt experience in 2011. More than nine persons fell victim to the vector-borne virus and over 4000 afflicted in the months between July and September. Jajpur district alone accounted for more than 1250 patients this year.
Cholera and Diarrhoea too raised their ugly head as usual in Koraput, Rayagada and Kalahandi districts claiming three lives in a single outbreak in the latter district in September. A mysterious disease, now marked as possible encephalitis, killed as many as 12 children in a remote village of Malkangiri district in November.
If communicable diseases posed big challenge to the healthcare service delivery system, crime and unethical medical practices did the sector no good. Instances of kidney sale with a well-organised racket functioning in the Twin City rocked the State in April this year with the network stretching to neighbouring States. Poor people were roped in by agents to sell their kidneys to affluent patients for high sums that were actually not handed over to the sellers.
And, as the country was recovering from the shock of over a dozen women due to faulty sterilisation procedure in Chhattishgarh, Odisha gave another dimension to the issue when a doctor was found to be using bicycle pumps to dilate the abdomen of women for surgery at a camp in Angul district. The practice of using cycle pumps as substitute of carbon dioxide insufflators prompted the Government to stop camps and issue strict guidelines on sterilisation operations.
The Government though can take pride in the fact that significant progress was made in upgradation of healthcare infrastructure at the grassroots. While the National programme for Prevention and control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS) is being expanded from five to 15 districts, six district headquarter hospitals have already been equipped with six-bed ICUs. The intensive and critical care units will be established in 14 more DHHs by the end of 2014-15 fiscal.
The State, however, achieved a major milestone this year with establishment of a bone marrow transplant (BMT) facility at SCB Medical College and Hospital. The BMT unit has conducted 12 cases as of date and is targeting to complete 20 by March-end. The BMT facility has come as a boon to the patients as all cases are now being provided with free transplant services, the costs of which would have run into lakhs of rupees in other centres. The BMT unit is also set to upgrade itself to include allogenic of donor-transplant from the coming year.
The State has also got approval for setting up five new medical colleges at Balasore, Baripada, Balangir, Koraput and Puri which would help the Government in overcoming the acute shortage of doctors. However, the much-awaited AIIMS Bhubaneswar has missed the December 25 deadline to opreationalise its its 1000-bed full-fledged hospital.
