Calcutta Health Care Center history

Structurally, it was like barracks and this asylum was closed on the 1st November 1831.

One native doctor, one jamader, eight peons, two cooks, two matores and two bhisties were sanctioned at a very low budget. It was built to cater 50-60 patients, but a report in 1834 showed that there were at least 267 patients with a nominal increase in financial sanction.

Calcutta Medical College (established in 1835)

In the 1840s, attention was paid to proper drainage and chemoprophylaxis was started with Quinine.(1,5)

In 1855 the medical board suggested to appoint a full time medical superintendent for all the asylums.

So, after forty years of private management European Lunatic Asylum of Bhowanipore was taken over from Beardsmore family in 1856 by the Government and surgeon Doctor j.

In 1857, the Indian Rebellion led to the transfer of administration of India to the Crown and different departments of civil services were developed.

The history of sanitary work in British India began with the reports of the Royal Commission of 1859.

The commission reported in 1863 on the sanitary conditions of the Army.

To improve civil sanitary conditions, sanitary boards were formed in each province in 1864.

In 1868, Sir James Clerk, by the order of Secretary of state of India prepared a questionnaire on the status of asylums in India.

Because of G.A. Hansen's discovery in 1873 that leprosy is spread by contact, H.V. Carter of the Bengal Medical Department gained an authority over leprosy control in India.

During 1874, there were at least six lunatic asylums in the Presidency of Bengal, which were, Bhowanipore, Dacca, Patna, Maidapur, Cuttack and Dullanda.

Under the orders of the Governor General of India in 1880, Sanitary Engineers were employed in all major provinces.

In 1881, the first Indian Factories Act was passed and the first all-India census was held.

In 1884, the foundation stone of India's first medical laboratory was laid down.

The first official records date back to 1896 when an epidemic of bubonic plague broke out in Bombay.

Childe, various types of research was conducted in 1897.(15) The experiments of Hankins concluded that plague bacillus was not spread by saprophytic means from the outside world.

An investigation about Kala-azar was carried out by G.M. Giles, Surgeon IMS on special duty in Assam in 1898.

The historian John Duffy explains that the concept of community health care and community health care centers can be traced back to 1901; when milk stations for infants in the New York City were established as the first step for the health of the public.

Up to the end of 1903, that deadly epidemic took the lives of about 2 million people according to state records but the actual figures might be much more.(1,5–7)

In 1905, the Berhampore lunatic asylum was enlarged at the cost of Rs.

S.R. Christophers and Doctor C.A. Bentley investigated the malaria and black-water fever in Duars in 1911.

In 1912, the Government of India sanctioned the appointment of Deputy Sanitary Commissioners and Health Officers with the local bodies and released funds for sanitation.(1,2,4)

Bently suggested efficient mosquito eradication and the improvement of drainage systems for malaria control.(41) In 1913, Maj.

To segregate those patients having Leprosy, an insane ward was opened at the Albert Victor Leper Asylum at Gobra on 26th September 1916.

R.C. MacWatt (1918), that malaria was a major problem in Punjab and extensive work was done for its prevention and control.

Berkeley Hill joined as medical superintendent on 19th October 1919, under whose able leadership European Lunatic Asylum became a symbol of excellence, but that was a different story.

In the year 1922, the names of all the ‘lunatic asylum’ were changed into ‘mental hospital’.

The hospital for Indian mental patients at Ranchi was actually opened in 1925 and the first superintendent of this hospital was Capt.

In 1930, the All-India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health was established in Calcutta.

Another private enterprise, this was opened in 1933 by the efforts of a person, Doctor K K Das, who was the founder secretary of this hospital.

The Psychiatry OPD of Medical College Hospital, Calcutta was started in 1939.

M Taylor, the superintendent of European Mental Hospital at Ranchi as a member of Health Survey and Development Committee (popularly known as Bhore Committee, 1946) was asked to survey mental hospitals.

In 1947, the Facility Guidelines Institute first published standards for hospital designs and construction amid the implementation of the federal Hill-Burton program for free and reduced health care.

3 lacs and named as Central Lunatic Asylum, Berhampore (Verma,1953). All the patients of Dullanda asylum and Cuttack asylum were shifted to the Berhampore asylum.

Moreover, Medicare and Medicaid, established in 1965, provided money for the care of the aged and the poor, respectively.

It was converted in to a full strength 250 bedded mental hospital for Mental Diseases in 1967.

The growth of these hospitals, along with the advent of new treatments and new technologies, contributed to escalating in-patient hospital costs, leading the federal government to impose wage and price controls on hospitals in 1971.

Medicare incorporated a prospective payment system in 1983, with federal programs paying a preset amount for a specific diagnosis in the form of Diagnostic Related Groups, or DRGs.

Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine; Charles E. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America’s Hospital System(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).

On the 25th anniversary of the clinic, in 1990, it was renamed the Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center and is still in operation today.

Then in 1997, the Balanced Budget Act decreased Medicare payments to hospitals by $115 billion over five years, including a projected $17 billion reduction in Medicare payments to hospitals.

President George W. Bush, in 2002, launched a Health Center Expansion Program that led to an increase in the access to basic health care services in about 1,200 communities by establishing new and bigger health center clinics.