A Parliamentary Committee has recommended a comprehensive central electronic database for all districts which should be uploaded state-wise for easy access by district planning teams while implementing schemes under the National Rural Health Mission.

The Public Accounts Committee, headed by senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi, has also observed that the Mission Steering Group (MSG) of the NRHM, which was supposed to periodically monitor the progress of the mission and meet twice a year has met only four times in four years during 2006-08.

Further, delegation of powers to the MSG and Empowered Programme Committee was subject to the condition that a progress report regarding NRHM, would be placed before the Cabinet on an annual basis.

The committee emphasised that the MSG should invariably meet twice a year and the progress report on the functioning of the mission must be placed before the cabinet once a year as stipulated.

Further, a suitable format should be prescribed for quarterly and annual reporting by smaller committees to the MSG so as to make monitoring more effective and meaningful.

In another notable observation, the PAC said that the per capita expenditure or allocation by the central government under NRHM has increased by an average of merely 15 per cent per annum in nominal terms since its inception as against the targeted increase of up to 30 per cent by 2007-08 and by 40 per cent from 2009-10.

Audit examination also revealed that a large number of health centres were functioning in unhygienic conditions due to various infrastructural deficiencies. In many cases, the centres were functioning in an unhygienic environment since they were located in the close vicinity of garbage dumps, cattle sheds, stagnant water bodies or polluting industries.

The checks also revealed that many of the health centres lacked essential infrastructure like water supply and storage tanks, the PAC report said.