From Army camps,healthcare indicators for N-E govts

Healthcare efforts by the Army in Northeast have highlighted areas where gaps exist.

Healthcare efforts by the Army in the Northeast have highlighted areas where gaps exist in government services besides giving indications of the kind of illnesses that need to be tackled and where.

The Armys medical camps in remote districts of Assam,Arunachal Pradesh,Nagaland and Manipur have seen 25,000 people treated for various ailments,a number of them undergoing various surgeries including cleft lip and palate surgery.

While our medical units normally reach out to people living in far-flung areas where there is a lack of infrastructure and access to medical facilities,we also help the state government setup wherever there is a gap, said Brig L S Vaz,who heads the medical branch of the Four Corps at Tezpur that operates in more than half of Assam as well as Arunachal Pradesh,with a sizeable part of its area being along the international border with China.

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The Armys healthcare outreach programme in Assam comes under Operation Sadbhavana and that in Arunachal Pradesh under Operation Samaritan. Our records show a large number of people in Assams rural areas suffer from gall bladder disorders,while there is also a high prevalence of water-borne diseases,malaria and malnutrition, said Brig Ashok Saxena,who heads the 155 Base Hospital at Tezpur,the Corps headquarter. Patients with tuberculosis,pneumonia,jaundice,and encephalitis and iron deficiency are also common,he said.

No doubt the health infrastructure in Assam has undergone drastic improvement in the past five or six years. The rural ambulance service is probably the best in the country. But there are still large gaps where we work together with the district health authorities to provide much-needed succour to the people, he added.

According to Assam 2011: A Development Perspective,a state government document,it is one of the 18 high-focus states characterised with a high level of disparity among districts in terms of public health infrastructure. Infant and maternal mortality rates in Assam are very high and the government has set up 2,991 health sub-centres between 2006 and 2011,and upgraded 103 community health centres to Indian Public Health Standard.

Cataract for instance is one area that has a huge backlog. The government had banned cataract camps by NGOs after a major mishap several years ago but the Army carries out a large number of such operations with the state government,providing intra-ocular lenses. There is a major dearth of trained birth attendants in Assam,and we are also soon joining hands with the state government to help train birth attendants under the NRHM, Brig Vaz said.

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The Army has also roped in a number of NGOs in addition to assisting the government to identify the gap areas and reach out to the needy. We identify poor people who cannot afford major surgeries,and then send them to the Army base hospital, said Monuwara Begum,president of Asha Nurses & Medical Academy,a Tezpur-based NGO that works in the rural areas.

Arunachal Pradesh has a severe shortage of doctors and paramedical personnel. In certain pockets,there are no doctors at all. So we provide medical care to the civilian population almost on a regular basis, Brig Vaz said. In Tenga,a subdivision town in West Kameng district,civilians regularly come for deliveries,he said. Fifteen children from Tawang,West Kameng and East Kameng districts bordering China will be given artificial limbs at the Army facility at Pune.