Rethinking primary health centers (PHCs): designing for the post pandemic era

Abstract

Thinking Shift Alert: “Thinking out of the box” to “Thinking around the box”. COVID-19 pandemic was a painful lesson for all. When it started to take control over the healthcare infrastructure in quick time, all we managed was to provide needed care to the population. The conventional healthcare infrastructure had a set back with restricted capacity to treat patients. The surge of incoming patients was one of its kind which led to innovative emergency approaches to cope with the situation at hand. Repurposing old structures, erecting temporary structures, establishing mobile hospitals and many more grass root innovations were surfaced and implemented worldwide. Although, Primary Health Centers (PHCs) were used for testing and vaccination, it was not utilized to its full potential due to several reasons. Primary Health Centers (PHCs) were utilized to its maximum capacity for testing and vaccination. The PHCs inaccessibility due to its remote location, less awareness among the community and various other reasons led to less testing and vaccination of the population resulting in underutilization of PHCs and invasion of deadly virus into the deepest of the societies. This study explores problems related to the underutilization of PHCs through a study in rural areas around Kanpur. We visited PHCs in Kanpur and interviewed the medical officers to find problems associated with its underutilization and to draw insights to brainstorm ideas about innovative ways to improve. One of the findings from the field study is that this problem needs an interdisciplinary attention of experts. Finally, we established that the concept of making the Primary Health Centers (PHC), a mobile infrastructure, will certainly remove most, if not all, the existing problem and has a potential to emerge as a new healthcare delivery model to provide basic healthcare services to the intended users.