Over 60 percent of the health facilities in the country offer basic services such as child care, immunisation, family planning and antenatal care, a new report of the Health Ministry shows.

The Nepal Health Facility Survey (NHFS)-2015, the first study that looked into the full package of health services, found that public facilities are far more likely to provide all the basic services than private ones. “Health facilities in the Hills (70 percent) are more likely to offer all the services than facilities in the Tarai (54 percent) or Mountains (53 percent),” the report reads.

In quake-hit districts, two thirds of the facilities offer all the basic services. Very few private hospitals offer vaccination to children under the routine immunisation programme of the government. The survey assessed 963 health facilities including referral hospitals, zonal hospitals, district hospital, Health Posts and private facilities. Over 4,000 healthcare professionals were interviewed for the study.

“These findings are really important for further planning and intervention,” said Dr Dipendra Raman Singh, chief of the Public Health Administration, Monitoring and Evaluation Division of the ministry.

While the survey reported that ante-natal care services are widely available, it says health providers were not counselling their patients adequately and did not inform the women much on complications related to pregnancy. Experts note that a thorough counselling of the pregnant women is essential as it helps identify any risks associated and avert it accordingly. Estimates show that 258 mothers die per 100,000 live births each year in the country.

The survey, however, portrays a grim picture of infection control. It states that only 46 percent of the facilities supplied soap and running water while alcohol-based disinfectants were available in only one fourth of the facilities. Very few of these facilities had surgical masks and gowns and almost no mechanism to protect the eyes.