K'taka govt failed to learn any lessons from Covid, claims report

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Civil rights group Bahutva Karnataka has released a report on the healthcare sector in the state and claims that the government has failed to learn any lessons from the Covid pandemic. Sylvia Karpagam, a public health expert, claimed that corporate firms are waiting to take over district hospitals in the state.

“We are more resourceful than Telangana, but they have better health indicators. The public health system is broken and it appears that the government will auction it”, she claimed. The two-page report card says the government did not take steps to tackle the acute shortage of public facilities, exorbitant costs in the private healthcare sector affecting both Covid and non-Covid patients.

“Despite instances of several patients with Covid reportedly dying due to acute shortage of oxygen for example in Chamarajnagar in May 2021 as well as lack of other essential services, there has been no serious attempt to plug the gaps in service delivery”, read the report.

The report quotes Rural Health Statistics (2021) and claims that the number of PHC doctors has dropped by 11.7% from 2005 to 2021. Though sub-centres and primary health centres have increased, community health centres have reduced. There is no disaster management plan in place, the report further said.

The report also says that “Routing tax-payers money to private providers through health insurance and public-private partnership (PPP) neither improves access to healthcare nor is cost-effective. Despite evidence in Karnataka that the PPP model is an abysmal failure, the state continues to hand over public facilities to private players”.

Another activist, Dr Pratibha, said, “Namma clinics have been set up but there are issues with timing, availability of human resources, lab equipment, drugs etc,'' adding that Ideally, existing urban health infrastructure could have been upgraded. The report also said promises made in budget 2022-23 have not been implemented including those pertaining to the Department of Foetal Medicine and Neonatology at Vani Vilas hospital.