‘Ama Hospital’ Initiative To Cover All State-Run Health Facilities In 4 Years: Odisha govt

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has accorded in-principle approval for expanding the ‘Ama Hospital’ scheme to all district headquarters and sub-divisional hospitals and community and primary health centres in the next four years.

An official notification issued by the Health department on Tuesday said that this is part of the efforts of the government to strengthen healthcare services in the state.

It further said that the bed strength of Jajpur DHH, which will be the teaching hospital for Jajati Keshari Medical College there, has been increased from 330 to 420 to provide affordable and quality health care to the general public and in view of changes in the norms of NMC for a teaching hospital with a 100 MBBS intake capacity.

In February, the government had decided to transform 147 health centres with high caseloads to Ama Hospital. The scheme initially aimed at improving infrastructure and ensuring enough manpower at 30 district headquarters,  30 sub-divisional, 82 CHCs, two UPHCs and one City Hospital, besides Capital Hospital and Rourkela Government Hospital, at a cost of Rs 750 crore by October. Each Assembly constituency had one health facility identified for transformation.

Two months later, 1,205 medical graduates were recruited to fill up the vacancies at referral hospitals, PHCs and CHCs selected under the initiative along with jail hospitals.