The State Health Society has selected agencies to start 15 urban primary health centres in Patna under public-private partnership mode.

According to initial plan, 36 urban primary health centres were to be started in Patna but because of some problems, only 15 would be opened.

Patna civil surgeon K.K. Mishra confirmed this on Sunday.

Sources in the district civil surgeon’s office said urban primary health centres would be opened in rented accommodations in Patna and all the 15 urban primary health centres would be started in a month.

Apart from providing treatment of many diseases free of cost, the urban primary health centres would take up holistic programmes such as immunisation, check-up of pregnant women, community-need assessment and control of communicable diseases.

According to the norms, there should be one primary health centre for every 50,000 population. The population of Patna is around 17 lakh according to the census conducted in 2011.

There is a need of at least 36 primary health centres in the district. “The urban primary health centres, which would run under the guidance of the civil surgeon, would start in urban areas, including Ambedkar Colony, Yarpur, Rukunpura Musahari, Cheena Kothi Lodhipur, Shastrinagar PWD Maidan, Jagjeevan Nahar, near Chitkohra Pul, Siparadih Toli, Chandpur Bela and Alamganj,” civil surgeon Mishra said.

He added that the urban primary health centres would be developed under National Urban Health Mission started by the Union government last year.

“The initiative is primarily aimed at addressing the health issues of the urban poor and to save the unnecessary expenditure of common people for availing basic treatment. Some of the treatments are provided free of cost at the health centres running in the rural areas,” said the civil surgeon.

About the facilities that would be available at the urban primary health centres, he said: “Every centre would have two doctors, five auxiliary nurse midwives for outdoor services, who would go door to door to carry out immunisation in the urban areas.”

He added that they would also look after the health of the pregnant women of the area concerned to ensure healthy deliveries and in a way healthy children.

“There would be three additional auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs) at the centre who would provide indoor services (hospital- related works),” the doct- or said.