This Urban Medical center (UHC) is bang on the periphery of the affluent IT district in Hyderabad. We went on a visit to the center after knowing through the news media that such a center catering to the daily labor and the surrounding slums is defunct.

The place is desolate and looks like a place to catch a disease rather than to get rid of one. There are some 5 contract nurses who have not been paid for 16 months whiling their time away. They give medicines for minor ailments to the occasional visitor. The facility itself is big one with decent infrastructure which is unused and rusting. No doctor visited this facility for 5 months. There was a young house surgeon who is mandated to spend 2 hrs/day for a month in the facility, she was looking at her watch to get out of the center and probably get into one of the swanky private hospitals to learn more about her trade.

So much for the governments focus on primary health care. We need not even talk about the PHCs in the rural areas, conditions must be depressing there. It is unfortunate that health care and education are not serious political issues in the country as yet, hence we see no political party interested in putting these on their agenda except for an occasional stir. They do not win and lose elections on these issues. Therefore there is no accountability in the system. 80% of the country does not have reach to primary health care, they are forced to go to the Private clinics and pay beyond their means.

The government is pouring so much money into health care the impact of is not quantified and measured, they keep throwing data on HIV,TB, cholera cases but no significant improvement is seen in the infrastructure on the ground. It is a messy relationship between the government and private hospitals; one of the government schemes “Arogyasri” allows BPL citizens to get medical care in private hospitals (this in principle worked to some extent) but the usurious private hospitals loot the exchequer with higher charges and conducting needless procedures on the patient. Definitely not a way to handle health care for 800 million poor citizens of the country.

There is utter despondency in the area of health care. We will file an RTI and get this center up and running for a while but who will do it for the country, who will wake up the sleeping “Health Ministers”.