Karwar: Gokarna, Murdeshwar, Banavasi, Ramnagar and Manki are the main attractions for the tourists and every day thousands of tourists visit these places. Also hundreds of vehicles ply on these towns to reach other tourist destinations. But the medical facility here is not up to the mark as there are no Community Health Centres (CHC) or private hospitals with all facility.

If any tourist comes across health problem or anyone meets with accident it will be a difficult situation to handle it and in the absence of proper medical facilities, they are suppose to go to taluk places after first aid at Primary Health Centre (PHC) here.

All these major tourist places have PHCs which operate round the clock with less infrastructure, medical facilities and staff and also with only one medical officer. When the medical officer is on leave, it is difficult to handle emergency situations and patients will have to suffer. To address such problems at these places, PHCs at these places will upgrade into CHCs.

Recently Uttara Kannada District Health Officer (DHO) has sent proposal to upgrade these five PHCs into CHCs to facilitate increasing patients in these places. Even district minister R V Deshpande also has shown keen interest for the upgradation of these hospitals which are tourist destinations. Speaking to Express, DHO Ashok Kumar said, CHCs will be having five doctors including three specialists, one medical officer and one dentist. Around the clock at least one or two doctors will be in the hospital and it will be helpful to handle emergency patients at any time.

ENS