BJP vs Left Front #3: Tribal Healthcare

The BJP is claiming that it is the messiah of tribal communities and hence people in Tripura should defeat the Left Front and vote the BJP-IPFT alliance into power in the upcoming Assembly elections. Among other things, the BJP bigwigs have said that the healthcare delivery system in Tripura is not successful.

This is nothing but a blatant falsehood. What distinguishes Tripura from all other states in the country is the immense expansion of the state run healthcare system in the past decade. Apart from the fact that village level Health Sub Centres and cluster level Community Health Centres have doubled between 2005-06 and 2015-16 (as per official National Health Mission data), Tripura is arguably the only state where the intractable problem of health personnel has been resolved successfully.

In most states, doctors and nursing staff are in short supply in remote rural areas, especially in tribal villages. So, despite setting up physical infrastructure, these key personnel are absent and the whole system collapses.

According to Rural Health Statistics 2017 released recently by the central ministry of health, Tripura is an exception to this. Although 47 doctors are required in the health centres located in tribal areas (as specified under Indian hospitals standards), Tripura had 97 doctors in PHCs and CHCs. On the other hand, in four other BJP ruled states with substantial tribal population, doctors were short of the requirement in Gujarat, MP and Chhattisgarh while they were slightly in excess in Jharkhand. Note that the three states with shortfall in doctors are the ones with long periods of BJP rule.

A similar picture exists for nursing staff. Tripura had a requirement for 103 nurses in tribal areas but has currently 341 nurses in position. In the four BJP ruled states, Gujarat has a slight excess of 11% in 2017 although despite unbroken BJP rule for 20 years it was running short till 2016. The other three states, MP, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand all had a shortage.

This trend continues for other key staff like laboratory technicians and pharmacists. Tripura has a widespread system of dispensing generic medicines from hospitals and dispensaries and so pharmacists are essential. Requirement was 55 but in position 75 pharmacists were working in the state’s tribal PHCs and CHCs. There was a requirement of 55 lab technicians of which 52 were in position. In all the four BJP ruled states both these types of personnel were much short of requirement. Jharkhand had the highest shortfall of 69% for pharmacists and 52% for lab. technicians.

What all this shows is that on the ground, Tripura’s Left Front govt. has ensured much better provision of healthcare facilities for tribals than the BJP run govts. of Gujarat, MP, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. Small wonder that health indicators of Tripura are far better than these states.