KMC to upgrade North Kolkata maternity home

Kolkata: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will upgrade the North Kolkata maternity home.

An X-Ray machine and another Ultra Sonography machine will be installed for the benefit of the patients. The Operation Theatre and labour room have been set up and there will be facilities for blood examination of dengue and malaria.

The KMC has also upgraded the Garden Reach maternity home. But the maternity home could not be smoothly run because of the lack of an anesthesiologist.

After coming to power in 2010, Mayor Sovan Chatterjee decided to upgrade the maternity homes run by the civic authorities. Earlier, they were in deplorable conditions. The Left Front government did not carry out any development and decided to hand over some of the maternity homes to private bodies.

The maternity homes were set up over 50 years ago to facilitate institutional delivery. But over the years there have been a sharp fall in the number of patients as delivery is free in the state-run hospitals too. Moreover, they have better facilities and so women prefer to go there instead of visiting the KMC maternity home. Steps have already been taken to upgrade the maternity homes by adding more facilities.