4 Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike UPHCs bag national recognition

BENGALURU: A team of assessors from the ministry of health and family welfare has recognised four urban primary health centres (UPHCs) of BBMP for 'quality certification' under the National Quality Assurance Standards (NQAS) programme.
These UPHCs are at TR Mill, Gottigere, Jalahalli, and New Bagalur Layout. The assessment was done for categories like dressing room and emergency, general clinic, maternity health, newborn and child health, immunisation, family planning, communicable disease, non-communicable disease, outreach, pharmacy and lab. The UPHCs have scored well in all.
Nine UPHCs at Marathahalli, Sahakarnagar, Mahalakshmi Layout, Austin Town, Konanakunte, Doddanekkundi, Nandini Layout, Kodandaramapuram and Kumaraswamy Layout and six referral hospitals at Banashankari, H Siddaiah Road, Ulsoor, Srirampura, Hosahalli and Jagjeevan Ram Nagar have got state recognition under the NQAS programme. The referral hospitals at H Siddaiah Road, Hosahalli, Ulsoor and Banashankari have won the national Laqshya award for reducing maternal and newborn mortality.
Dr AS Balasundar, chief health officer (public health), BBMP, said there are two categories - state and national level - of recognition of hospitals delivering the best healthcare services to the public.
The external assessors from all over India examined the facilities, quality of treatment, doctors' and nurses' behaviour with patients, number of patients visiting the hospital, cleanliness, pharmacy service and other things, he said. The assessors gave scores up to 100 for each category and the hospital which scored more than 90% would get national recognition.
"BBMP hospitals underwent assessment under the NQAS programme. Four UPHCs got national recognition and 15 UPHCs and referral hospitals state-level recognition," Balasundar said.
He added that the Palike achieved this because of the hard work of the doctors and other staff. BBMP has decided to felicitate them, a move which would help motivate others to improve healthcare services, he added.
Dr Shobha Sudarshan, maternity health and family welfare officer, BBMP, said the civic body aims to get recognition from NQAS for all 141 UPHCs in the city. "We are working hard to improve the quality of health services to achieve our goal," Shobha said.