Equipment in various hospitals across the country wortha thousand crore rupees is lying either unused or remains without maintenance, leading to wastage of resources. A massive mapping exercise undertaken by the Union Health Ministry across 29 states revealed that equipment worth Rs 1015.74 crore rupees was not functional.

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The exercise mapped inventory of all bio-medical equipment. About 7,56,750 pieces of equipment were identified in 29,115 health facilities across India. The total equipment is worth Rs 4564 crore. Of these, 13 per cent to 34 per cent have been found to be non-functional.

These include critical equipment like operation theatre set-ups, mammography machines, MRI and CT scanners, heart lung machines, and incubators. Breakdown of the equipment was found to be due to various reasons: spare part failures, electrical supply failures, design failures, improper use, wrong diagnosis of equipment errors, use of wrong accessories, and failure to procure spare parts and accessories on time, the report said.

Taking note of the observations made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on equipment in various hospitals being either unused or not maintained, resulting in wastage of resources, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare JP Nadda directed ministry officials to devise appropriate mechanisms to ensure that medical equipment already purchased are properly maintained beyond their guarantee period under the Biomedical Equipment Management and Maintenance Programme (BMMP).

Eleven states — Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Rajasthan, Mizoram, Chandigarh, Maharashtra, Sikkim, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Jharkhand, and Puducherry — have outsourced the maintenance of these machines, Nadda said.

For 12 states where work orders have been issued, the dysfunctional equipment costing Rs 378.11 crore was functional within four months. "There has been a reduction in dysfunctionality rate of about 25 per cent with downtime of 3-4 months to about 5 per cent," as per the report released by the government.

"Under BMMP, support is being provided to state governments to outsource equipment maintenance. After the inventory mapping, tenders were rolled out to award maintenance contracts in various states," a statement released by the ministry stated.

Three states — Tripura, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh — have completed the tendering process and are in the programme implementation stage for outsourcing maintenance. Five states — Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Gujarat — are in the process of finalising the tenders. Other states have not yet taken up the maintenance work.