Srinagar: National Health Mission has declared more than 4,500 biomedical equipments as ‘dysfunctional’ in the peripheral hospitals of Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh because authorities have failed to repair them over the years.
According to official figures, there are around 4,533 biomedical equipments non-operational in 533 hospitals run by the Department of Health in different districts of Jammu Kashmir, and Ladakh. The defunct equipment are among the total 16,414 machines mapped under the Biomedical Equipment Management and Maintenance Program (BEMMP) till last month.
“After achieving 80 percent of inventory mapping about 16,414 number of equipment has been tagged under the Biomedical Equipment Management and Maintenance Program out of which nearly 4533 machines about 27 percent were found to be dysfunctional across the erstwhile state of J&K (Now the two Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh),” revealed an official in the first review meeting of BEMMP held on Saturday.
“Out of dysfunctional equipments, about 494 including the critical care apparatus and nearly 60 declared as ‘Beyond Repairs’ while 3,978 defunct machines are undergoing repair,” he said.
This was the first review meeting of BEMMP organised by NHM J&K which is the nodal agency for the government of India program.
The BEMMP is an initiative by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India and run by National Health Mission to provide support to governments to outsource medical equipment maintenance for all healthcare facilities for improvement in the functionality and life of equipment.
The meeting was attended by Mission Director NHM J&K , who was the chairman, nodal officer BEMMP in J&K, health directors of Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh, Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) of various districts and Medical Superintendents of many beneficiary hospitals.
On the occasion Mission Director NHM J&K, Bhupinder Kumar said that the progress of repair work is slow because of the prevailing situation in J&K including internet issue, poor road and air connectivity’s and extreme weather.
“We are expecting much better speed in coming days,” he said.
Kumar directed the company to improve repair work and complete the remaining mapping in the leftover facilities without delays.
As per the review report the best response and accomplishments performance is from Doda district followed by the Reasi, Udhampur in Jammu zone and, JLNM hospital and CHC Pattan in Kashmir zone.
It said that district hospital Baramulla however, fail to attend this video conference meeting and also become a reason of annoyance for MD NHM for their poor response to support this cause earlier
“There’re certain untouched areas those still required to be visited by technical specialists, like Kishtwar, Ganderbal, Kargil,Kulgam, Shopian, Pulwama and parts of Leh districts,” the report said.

Manzoor ul-Hassan