'Health sector in Manipur in a healthy state'

IMPHAL, July 16: Manipur is doing exceptiolly well in the health sector asserted Medical Director, Dr. Okram Ibomcha while interacting with media persons at the press conference organized by Directorate of Information & Public Relations at its office complex, Moirangkhom today. The director cited a number of indicators to substantiate his assertion. Over the last many years Manipur has been securing the top position when it comes to reducing Infant mortality rate (IMR), which is the number of deaths of children less than one year of age per 1000 live births. Manipur has been successful in bringing down the IMR from 20 in 2001 to around 11 from 2011 onwards which incidentally is also the IMR of 2014. This according to the director is a big achievement considering the fact that the tiol IMR stands at 40.

The mortality rate of children under 5 years of age (U5MR) for Manipur for 2015 stands at 12.5 which again is much lower than the tiol U5MR figure of 48. When it comes to the materl death per 100,000 live births or the Materl Mortality Rate (MMR), for India for the year 2014 is 181 deaths per 100,000 live births while for Manipur the figure is comparably very low at 60 to 70, the director also informed.

The director also listed the improvement in medical infrastructure and manpower in terms of doctors, nurses and other auxiliary staff s responsible for these positive indicators in health sector. There are 1389 beds under the State Health department including JNIMS while RIMS has 881 beds. Over this there are 332 beds in private hospitals making for a total of 2602 beds available in health care facilities in the state.

The number of medical doctors increased from 615 in 2003 to 1068 in 2016, while the number of dental surgeons increased from 17 to 89 during the same period. There are at present 566 staff nurses in the state which was just 235 in the year 2003. The number of patients per every doctor in the state works out to 1066 at present which is also compares very favourably with the tiol average of 1700 patients for one doctor.

As for nurses, the tiol average stands at 2500 patients for every nurse while the figure for the state is 250 patients for every nurse. This abundance of manpower contributes immensely in the improvement Manipur has been able to ensure in the health sector.

In the year 2014-15, state government health institutions carried out 11517 deliveries and conducted 592 CS, JNIMS carried out 3696 deliveries  and conducted 1540 CS and filly , for the same period, RIMS carried out 11192 deliveries and conducted 3583 CS, informed the director to the media.