National

Assam plans to use tea garden hospitals for better healthcare

KOLKATA: The Assam government is planning to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with private tea gardens to utilise their healthcare facilities for the benefit of people living in the rural areas.

This private-public partnership model, a National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scheme, was proposed as one of the ways of meeting the lack of private players at the district level.

Of the 750 to 800 gardens in the State, around 50 would be targeted this year. “The tea garden hospitals provide services only to their permanent workers, whose numbers are usually around 800 to 900,” said J.B. Ekka, Additional Secretary in the State’s Department of Health and Family Welfare and Mission Director, NRHM, on the sidelines of a seminar on ‘Healthcare North East’, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry here on Thursday.

“The idea is to target the other residents of the area — around 5,000 to 7,000 thousand — who stay in the periphery of the garden but cannot avail themselves of these services, including the casual workers employed only during the plucking season and their families,” he added.

With declining investments in tea gardens, there is a lack of medical personnel as well as shortage of medicine supply, a gap that the State government would seek to address with supplies of medicine and skilled manpower.

While the Centre would provide an average assistance worth Rs. 15 lakh per hospital every year, the amount may be modified according to individual requirements, said Mr. Ekka.

The focus of the partnership would largely be on medium-sized hospitals.

“The government has already asked the tea associations to identify the gardens and determine the gap, following which we will verify the figures,” he said.

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