New Delhi: The fourteen medical colleges that were established in Uttar Pradesh last year have improved the health infrastructure in districts, the state’s Medical Education secretary Alok Kumar has claimed.
In an internal report prepared by Kumar this month, he has compared various services offered in the 14 district hospitals, which were converted to medical colleges in 2022, by upgrading their infrastructure.
According to the report, which has been accessed by ThePrint, data from 2019 has been compared that from 2022 on four parameters including the number of cesarean deliveries (C-sections), major surgeries done in the hospitals and admissions in out patient and in patient departments. Data for 2020 and 2021 were not used because those were the pandemic years.
Sharing the findings on social media, the secretary said the numbers depicted improvement in healthcare infrastructure in the districts.
Drastic improvement in performance of the 14 newly established medical colleges . We compare 2019 ( pre-Covid) with 2022 ( post -Covid) .There has been 2X increase across parameters. Clear evidence of improving health services in these 14 districts .@brajeshpathakup pic.twitter.com/Qb8wI2F3BR
— Alok Kumar 🇮🇳 (@IasAlok) February 10, 2023
According to the report, while a total of 13,112 C-Sections were done in the 14 hospitals in 2019, the number went up to 26,583 in 2022.
OPD or out patient department admissions in the hospitals, which stood at 56,30,550 in 2019, went up to 85,10,165 in 2022. The number of major surgeries conducted in these hospitals was less than 35,290 in 2019, but increased to 67,867 in 2022, the report stated.
Additionally, the number of admissions in the in patient department also went up from 4,28,280 in 2019, to nearly 8,91,081 in 2022.
Talking about what led to improvement in quality of health services offered, he said that the fact that there was better staffing and greater degree of monitoring worked in favour of the hospitals.
According to media reports, before 2017, there were only 12 government medical colleges in UP. With the addition of the 14 new medical colleges, the government is trying to meet the central government’s target of one medical college in each district.
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‘Better facilities, all in one place’
Speaking to ThePrint, Kumar said the central government had approved 157 new medical colleges in the country in 2021. Under this scheme, existing district hospitals were to be upgraded to medical colleges and 14 such upgrades took place in UP.
“The idea behind setting up medical colleges is also to upgrade the health infrastructure and get more people to come to the hospital. In order to get them we needed to build their trust and get a certain number of patients. Since district hospitals already have a certain number of patients coming in, it was better to upgrade district hospitals to medical colleges,” said Kumar.
He added: “After the hospitals were made into medical colleges, we had better facilities to offer, like better blood transfusion machines, better pathology facilities and testing facilities, all available in one place. Earlier, people would go to the hospital first and then go to a private lab and get tests done, now everything is in one place, saving them a lot of trouble.”
The Yogi Adityanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Uttar Pradesh had, on the occasion of completing five-and-a-half years of tenure in 2021, brought out a report card highlighting its achievements, according to which the government had added 1,838 medical seats in government medical colleges and 1,750 seats in private medical colleges during this time. The report also added that 7,000 seats had been added in nursing courses and 2,000 in paramedical. ThePrint has a copy of the report.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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