New building of JIPMER urban health centre inaugurated at Puducherry's Kurusukuppam

PUDUCHERRY: The newly-constructed Urban Health Centre (JUHC) building of JIPMER at Kurusukuppam was inaugurated by Chief Minister N Rangasamy on Monday. 

Pro-tem Speaker and local MLA K Lakshminarayanan and JIPMER director Dr. Rakesh Aggarwal were among the dignitaries who participated in the inauguration of the three-storeyed building constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 5 crores. 

The JUHC was established in 1954 to provide a comprehensive, family folder-based health care for four wards under Puducherry Municipality -- Kurusukuppam, Chinnayapuram, Vazhaikulam, and Vaithikuppam, according to a JIPMER release. 

This health centre serves a population of approximately 10,000 families of fishermen and daily-wage labourers. It provides all essential services to all age groups, including special clinics for pregnant and lactating mothers, immunization clinic for children under five and diagnosis, treatment and regular follow-up of patients suffering from hypertension, diabetes, asthma, thyroid disease, psychiatric illnesses, and heart disease.
 
It also provides basic laboratory services for diagnosis and follow-up of anaemia, diabetes, thyroid illness and malaria. It coordinates serological investigations for HIV, syphilis and hepatitis for pregnant mothers with the main JIPMER hospital. 

The center serves as a training centre for undergraduate students and postgraduate students in the department of Preventive- Social Medicine, Public Health, Pulmonary and Geriatric Medicine. It also serves as the Community Training Centre for nursing and several other allied health science courses.

The new building has the added benefit of a more spacious outpatient consultation area, besides designated areas for counselling services, weekly consultation with specialists from the departments of OBGY, Medicine, Psychiatry, Ophthalmology from JIPMER who visit the centers. 

It is proposed to provide physiotherapy services and to hold regular health awareness sessions for the beneficiaries. Door-to-door community-based screening for cancer and other non-communicable diseases are planned in the future.