Anantnag: For the last more than ten years now, the Primary Health Centre (PHC), here in the Gadol area of Kokernag in the Anantnag district, has been running from a cramped shop in the area. There are no doctors deputed to the PHC and no necessary medical equipment required at such a center.
Only one Pharmacist and a nursing orderly run the center, which caters to the health care needs of more than 15000 people in the area.
“The center is equally humiliating for the people in the area as well as the health department. It is an absolute sham,” the locals told Kashmir Reader, “Earlier the PHC operated from a portion of a house and now has been shifted to this absolutely cramped shop,” they said.
The locals told Kashmir Reader that doctor visits from a nearby facility only once or twice a week. “And for the rest of the week, we are left at the mercy of the pharmacist for all our healthcare needs,” they added.
They lamented that they have to travel all the way to Kokernag or Anantnag for their health care needs. “We are children of a lesser god and no one is even bothered about our healthcare needs. We just survive somehow,” they told Kashmir Reader.
More than a decade ago a building was sanctioned to be constructed in the area and it was suggested that the PHC will be shifted to the building as and when it is completed.
The construction, as per sources, was handed over to the Police Housing Board. “However, a decade later they are yet to complete the building,” the sources in the health department said.
They said that it was a sad state of affairs, for the PHC was an important one given the difficult terrain and inaccessibility of the area through the most part of the year. “At least the building would have given an honorable place for the patients as well as the staff, to sit in, even if the infrastructure is not there,” the sources in the health department said.
Kashmir Reader talked to Block Medical Officer (BMO) Kokernag, Dr Gowhar Ahmad, who said that the PHC was yet to be sanctioned officially and was just a makeshift arrangement.
“Yes, it is running from a shop but the issue is not the availability of staff and/or the infrastructure,” the BMO said, “The real issue is that the PHC has to be sanctioned first,”
The BMO said that he has deputed staff from other nearby facilities to keep this arrangement running. “As far as the building is concerned, it was sanctioned by some minister, not for the PHC. The use of the building was to be decided later, but the people thought it will be best used for the PHC,” the BMO said.
He added that the people of the area have been seeking help from the concerned authorities, given the fact that a full-fledged PHC was the need of the hour for the people of Gadol.

Suhail A Shah