63.8 per cent families in Telangana avoid government centres when sick: Survey

HYDERABAD: People in Telangana do not appear to trust government health services. This was revealed in the recent National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5 data that found nearly 63.8 per cent of the households interviewed in Telangana did not generally use a government health facility when they fell sick.

There were various reasons, and one of them was the poor quality of care. About 57.5 per cent of the individuals stated this as one of the key reasons followed by 40 per cent stating that waiting time is quite long.

About 34.5 per cent of them said that the reason was that no government medical and a health facility was near to their place of living.

This data comes at a time when the Telangana government is trying to bring in major changes in the health department and public health delivery systems by improving both infrastructure and service-related needs. In fact, in 2022-23 budget, Rs 11,000 crore had been allocated to the medical and health department.

It remains to be seen if this huge allocation would make any difference to the ramshackle infrastructure that the state has and if it would change the perception of the people for the better about medicare at government establishments.

The NFHS-5 survey also found that in terms of interaction with healthcare workers (Auxiliary Nurse Midwives, ASHA workers etc) and women with people,  it was very low in Telangana, about 28.7 per cent of women in the past three months.

In terms of health camp coverage, only 13.5 per cent of women visited such a camp in the past three months, indicating poor delivery of health to women patients as 41 per cent of men in comparison had visited a health camp in the time under review.

This was seen in the service delivery by Anganwadi centres (AWCs) as 19.1 per cent of mothers said they received no services from the local Anganwadi during their pregnancy.