SRINAGAR: The Health and Medical Education department is mulling to remove the District Hospital Baramulla from a list of hospitals and health institutions availing free repair facility of defunct equipment under the Biomedical Equipment Management and Maintenance Program (BEMMP), Kashmir Reader has learnt.
According to official sources, the National Health Mission J&K has proposed that the Hospital be removed from the beneficiary list of BEMMP for holding-up the repair work under the scheme unnecessarily.
“The administration of the District Hospital Baramulla has recently put hurdles in the working of engineers appointed under the government of India scheme namely Biomedical Equipment Management and Maintenance Program which is why the National Health Mission (NHM) J&K has recommended that the hospital should be removed from the beneficiary list,” said a NHM official.
He said the administrators of the Government Medical College Baramulla and its associated hospital the district hospital Baramulla were not allowing engineers to repair the defunct biomedical machines which had been declared non-functional during the mapping process.
Recently, a team of engineers from the selected company visited the hospital to repair some equipment. However, the Medical Superintendent and Principal Government Medical College, Baramulla stopped them from doing it, the employee said.
“The hospital administrators stopped engineers from repairing the equipment despite the approval by the Health department and the Health ministry,” he said.
The scheme was launched in J&K last year as nearly 30 percent of bio-medical equipment was left dysfunctional in the government-run district hospitals and health centers of Jammu and Kashmir over the years.
As per official data, there are nearly 15,325 machinery equipment installed in these hospitals out of which 4240 have been declared defunct in mapping under BEMMP.
“So far 400 equipments were made functional in the first month of the scheme while near 40 have been put in the category of Beyond Economic Repair which means the machines cannot be repaired.” said an official quoting the data.
In a story, Kashmir Reader highlighted that patient care had taken a heavy toll in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district as more than 125 biomedical equipments have been lying defunct at the District Hospital for last many years. They include ventilators, baby warmers, anesthesia apparatus, operation theatre devices and X-ray machine.
Director NHM Bhupinder Kumar didn’t respond to repeated calls.
Nodal Officer for NHM J&K, Dr M Shafi Koka refused to comment over the issue.

Manzoor ul-Hassan