The department of health and family welfare in the state has taken serious initiatives to ensure proper healthcare services are available to people living in the tribal areas.

With the advent of monsoon season fast approaching, the government of Andhra Pradesh is taking steps to ensure all medicines and doctors are available at the PHCs in the tribal areas and is also ensuring measures under National Rural Healthcare Mission (NRHM) to contain the spurt of endemic diseases like malaria, typhoid and spread of other infectious diseases in the tribal areas across the state.

Every year hundreds of people die due to outbreaks of viral fever in the tribal and agency areas of the state. Dengue fever, malaria, brain fever or encephalitis and chikungunya have become common in the tribal areas because of the absence of sanitation and lack of medical care.

In view this, the state government is taking early steps to see that all vacancies in the PHCs are filled and has even issued instruction to the concerned departments that all the medical officers posted recently on transfer should take early charge of the PHCs in the tribal areas to take stock of the situation before hand.

While reviewing the tribal health initiatives in all the nine integrated tribal development agencies in the state, Poonam Malakondaiah, Commissioner of Health and Family Welfare said, “We are ensuring that all the medicines are available in the sub-centres and in case of any shortage we have instructed the district medical health officers to procure locally and ensure that the tribals should not be suffering due to shortage of medicines in any hospital. And at the same time to see that doctors are available at PHCs we have instructed all the medical officers to take early charge in the tribal PHCs and even suggested not to relieve the doctors till the substitute staff takes over the charge.”

In 2003, when the viral outbreak reached epidemic proportions, more than 200 children died of encephalitis in the state. Around 50 people died this year from various fevers.

Agency areas of Eturnagaram, Govindaraopet, Tadwai, Mangapet, Kothaguda and Gudur are usually most affected areas of viral fever in Warangal district. Apart from this the people in districts of Khammam, Adilabad, Rajahmundry, Visakhapatnam and nearby areas too fall prey to the viral fevers every year.

Having learned from the earlier experiences, the state health department is taking early steps and ensuring that all the healthcare programmes under the NRHM are effectively implemented in the tribal regions.

In case of overload and urgency, the Commissioner has also suggested utilizing the services of Ayush doctors.