Organisation and working of community health centres in India and Punjab

In the past century medicine has grown increasingly scientific and hospitals have tended to become technological workshops for the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Out of four Primary Health Centers, one Community Health Centre has been created with 30 beds in rural areas and 50 beds at taluk level to serve as referral hospital for the rural population. Hospitals is an integral part of a social and medical organization, the functions of which are to provide for the complete health care of the population-both curative and preventive and whose out-patients services reach out to the family and its home environment, the hospital is also a center for training of health workers and for bio-social research. The Administrative Reform Commission in its report on State Administration recommended that, ‖ the head of the Council of Ministers the chief Minister should, in selecting his colleagues, give special attention to considerations of political stature, personal integrity, intellectual ability and capacity for taking decisions and sustained application to work. In the new millennium, State Health Department must change its emphasis from merely examining files sitting in the offices but should ensure implementation of the programmes through personal visits, monitoring, regular guidance. Thus, in addition to its generic health Centre functions, it provides essential surgical, maternity and medical care, as well as carrying out preventive and promotive activities in the neighborhood it serves.