Six government hospitals of Karnataka have become the first set of government run medical institutions to be awarded the ISO 9002 quality certification in India.

The district hospitals in Mangalore, Belgaum, Shimoga, Chitradurga, Davangere and Tumkur are a part of a quite revolution taking place in the government hospitals in the State, Mahendra Jain, special commissioner, Bangalore City Corporation, told Pharambiz.com.

The six hospitals are among the 204 government hospitals in the State under the World Bank aided Karnataka Health Systems development Projects (KHSDP) which was earlier headed by Jain.

The six hospitals were audited for maternity care, blood bank services and equipment maintenance by the British Standards Institute. "As a result of the dramatic improvement in health services by the government hospitals, some smaller private nursing homes are closing down in the regions. This was not an intended objective but an unavoidable consequences," he claimed.

The complete overhaul of hospitals under the KHSDP project began in 1999 and the process was expected to be completed at all the 204 hospitals by July 2003.

Out of the total project cost of Rs. 660 crore, 85 percent has been borne by the World Bank with the rest coming from the State government.

A measure of the programme's success is the fact that the bed occupancy rate in these hospitals has more than doubled from 36.68 per cent in 1996 to 75.30 per cent in 2002 despite the fact that the 6,000 beds were added during the period, Jain said.

Likewise the percentage of surgeries to admissions increased from 4.84 per cent in 1996 to 23.40 per cent in 2002 while admissions during the period rose from 6.28 lakh to 14 lakh.

All the hospitals have not levied any user charges for persons below the poverty line.