Health clinic-turned parlour dispenses beauty

Alluring treatment

The centre does not treat the sick and restore their health. It restores beauty instead. In a shocking reflection of the state of health services in the Uttar Pradesh, a primary health centre at Basahan village was found to be having a beauty parlour and training centre on its premises instead of doctors and medicines. Senior officials of the health department, who had arrived at the village a few days back and visited the primary health centre were shocked to see the board of a beauty parlour and scores of girls being trained there by qualified beauticians. “The girls, who were from Basahan and nearby villages, on being asked, said that they have been reciving training there for the past several months,” the officials said in their report to the government.

Absentee nurses

The auxillary nurse midwives (ANM), who are posted to the centres, are supposed to stay at the centres at nights for which they also get paid. “In majority of cases they do not even visit the centres, let alone staying there at nights but they claim the allowance,” the officials said. “As the centres have been abandoned, some people may have broken the lock at the Basahan centre and started the beauty parlour,” they said.

Though the officials, who visited many other primary and community health centres, did not find the same scene elsewhere, they did find many of them without doctors and medicine. The chief medical officer, taking a serious view of the matter, has ordered an inquiry. Health services in UP have been badly hit due to acute shortage of doctors and para medical staff affecting several important programmes.