2 Primary health centres get national certification

Warangal: Two primary health centres (PHCs) - Mulkanoor and Uppal - brought laurels to Warangal Urban district by winning the prestigious National Quality Assurance Standard Certificate (NQAS) for providing quality public health services. Mulkanoor and Uppal PHCs scored 88.8 per cent and 89 per cent respectively in the quality assessment.  

It’s not all that easy to get national certification that covers vast areas such as outpatient, in-patient, labour room, lab services, administration and implementation of national health programmes - pulse polio, malaria, TB, mother and child care etc. 

It may be noted here that PHCs have to come through several rounds before they make it for the national level certification. Both the hospitals that have gone through assessment at district and State-level successfully were inspected by a national-level team on July 2 and 3. 

“The quality assessment was based on four key elements - record review, staff interview, eliciting information from patients which also includes field survey and direct observation,” Dr B Keshava Rao, Mulkanoor PHC medical officer told The Hans India. 

This apart, focus will be on management of bio-medical waste disposal, aesthetics of the hospital, fire safety, pest control, quality of drinking water etc, he said. 

As a reward both these PHCs will get Rs 3 lakh each for a period of three years from the Central government. These funds will be used for the development of the hospital. 

Warangal Urban District Collector Amrapali Kata, who commended the staff of both the PHCs for getting national-level recognition, said: “This is a morale boosting development. We have Ainavolu, Dharmasagar and Gopalpur (PHCs), Lashkar Singaram, Kirthi Nagar and Desaipet (urban OHCs) on our radar to make them compete for the national certification.”