Nearly three years after it came into being, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is yet to take charge or be given the charge of the healthcare units in the erstwhile seven city municipal areas and the town municipal council and the 110 villages.

The H1N1 crisis seems to have brought the matter to the fore and as a temporary arrangement a chief secretary level meeting recently decided that Bangalore Urban District Health Officer shall work under the instructions of the BBMP wherever their jurisdictions overlap, official sources said. An order on the same has been issued by the Commissioner Health and Family Welfare, it is said.

BBMP Chief Health Officer Dr Gayathri said, “We have been asking that the units that are due to us, be handed over to us.” In Bangalore Urban District, Dr Shivaram (the previous DHO who recently got transferred to Chikmagalur) said that the matter was broached before the higher ups many times during his two-year stint.

Health and Family Welfare Commissioner P N Srinivasachary acknowledged that the expectations of theNational Urban Health Mission (NUHM) on the lines of the National Rural Health Mission had kept the matter pending.

To recall, NUHM was in the news during first term of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. Former union minister for Health and Family Ambumani Ramadoss had in fact mentioned it when he was in Bangalore for the Nimhans convocation in January this year.

Hitches

The non-integration of health services in BBMP has meant confusion in the tabulation of data on immunisation among others, said officials, They (officials) pointed out that pulse polio numbers of BBMP, which has a huge immigration population, are just the core area (former BMP limits) number.

The remaining goes under Bangalore Urban district bracket.

The house-to-house survey for H1N1 prevalence may be another such example, the recent order notwithstanding.

On Monday, BBMP CHO Dr Gayathri said that the house-to-house survey was just a two-day affair last week, coinciding with the visit of the team from the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, Delhi.

Health and Family Welfare Director Usha Vasunkar, however, noted that the survey is an ongoing programme.

The services of the preventive and community medicine departments of all the medical colleges are being sourced for the task, she said.

Planner view

Healthcare is already a listed service function of an urban local body at the level of a city corporation, pointed out a resource person working on the urban reforms under JNNURM.

Run of numbers

Bangalore Urban district’s run of health care units reads as three 100-bed general hospitals— K R Puram, Yelahanka and Anekal; 72 Primary Health Centres (sixbedded), five Community Health Centres; 19 India Population Project units; and 3 Urban Health Centres.