BBMP maternity homes to get a facelift

After many years, the BBMP is giving a facelift to its maternity homes, one step at a time.

Beginning from construction and repair, the civic body is planning to focus on improving in each of the existing 24 BBMP maternity homes and six referral hospitals.

Earlier this week, the civic body has invited tenders to provide medical equipment for cardiac monitoring and lighting facilities at operation theatres for these hospitals.

The civic body will also undertake the construction and renovation of maternity homes at SK Garden ward, Bharati Nagar ward and construction of a referral hospital in Ganesha Mandira ward.

According to Dr Nirmala Buggi, chief health officer, clinical, BBMP, close to 12,000 children are born at BBMP’s maternity homes per month. “We attend to almost 1.4 lakh deliveries in a year and we want to provide quality healthcare. We are improving the medical equipment in our maternity homes,” she said.

BBMP Commissioner N Manjunatha Prasad said the construction and renovation of maternity homes such as the one in Chamarajpet were included in the budget itself.

Though most of these maternity homes are situated in thickly populated areas to provide facilities, especially for people located in slums, many maternity homes are run single-handedly by nurses, and gynaecologists are available only during stipulated hours. This was proved during a surprise inspection by Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara of a maternity home in Ganganagar.

The 2018-19 BBMP budget had earmarked Rs 1.50 crore to provide health kits for postnatal mothers who avail services from maternity homes to maintain health and hygiene.

The civic body had also introduced the ‘Pink Baby’ scheme in the budget to provide Rs 5 lakh fixed deposit for the parents of the girl baby born on the first day of every year in all 24 maternity hospitals, to help them avail better education.