At a time when people in the mountainous areas are tackling the hardships resulting from incidence of heavy rainfall and landslides in parts of the mountainous regions of Uttarakhand, the woes of the citizens especially in Chamoli district have been exacerbated due to the dire condition of the community health centre at Joshimath.
While the advent of the rainy season has also resulted in creation of conditions associated with incidence of typhoid fever, the Joshimath community health centre is suffering from a shortage of vital life saving drugs.
Due to this, the patients visiting this CHC are left with no other option but to purchase the medicine from private-owned chemist shops at much higher cost. People from financially weaker families are the ones worst hit by the shortage of life saving drugs at the Joshimath CHC.
It is worth mentioning here that the community health centre in Joshimath has for quite some time been eliciting focus more often for varied issues and problems experienced here from time to time. Earning infamy at times for non-availability of means to conduct medical examination of visiting patients or due to issues related to medicines, the dire condition of the Joshimath CHC clearly disproves the claims made by successive State Governments regarding the development of medical health facilities especially in the mountainous regions of Uttarakhand.
While the probability of the incidence of typhoid has accompanied the advent of rainy season, the drugs for treatment of this disease are not available here. The non-availability of medicine for typhoid at the Joshimath CHC has once again made the public question the system considering the vital medicines provided to Government medical treatment centres under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).
This situation has led the public to question as to whether medicines purportedly provided by the government under NRHM are actually reaching the intended destination or are they getting used up soon after being received by government centres like the Joshimath CHC.
locals complain that due to such motley problems, the CHC here has become more of a referral centre and appears to be opened merely to fulfill an official formality.
Non-availability of vital drugs here is among the factors which raise questions regarding the functioning of the health department. As is the general practice, senior departmental officials fail to provide clear explanation and dodge the issue when questioned about the status of this CHC.