maternal health care is poor. Even in private sector, health care is often confined to family planning and antenatal care and do not extend to more critical services like labor and delivery, where proper medical care can save life in the case of complications. Due to non accessibility to public health care and low quality of health care services, a majority of people in India turn to the local private health sector as their first choice of care. If we look at the health landscape of India 92 percent of health care visits are to private providers of which 70 percent is urban population. However, private health care is expensive, often unregulated and variable in quality. Besides being unreliable for the illiterate, it is also unaffordable by low income rural folks.

To control the spread of diseases and reduce the growing rates of mortality due to lack of adequate health facilities, special attention needs to be given to the health care in rural areas. The key challenges in the healthcare sector are low quality of care, poor accountability, lack of awareness, and limited access to facilities.

The uneven distribution of health care facility and attainment of health status is a major cause of concern here. We have on the one extreme state like Kerala and Tamil Nadu that can match the most advanced emerging market economies in health indicators and on the other, states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh where the situation is pathetic. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar which are first and third largest state of India respectively from the viewpoint of population not only fair badly in terms of basic health care facilities, but also show wide inter region and inter district variations. Such a situation on the one hand works against the interest of the poor and deprived section of population living in these areas and on the other result in the states

suffering even after having rather rich natural resource base.

The public sector hospitals are more widespread (around 60%), but the budgetary allocation of 1% of the GDP, is insufficient to even service the existing infrastructure. The private sector has been growing for the last 15 years and accounts for an estimated 95% of new hospital beds that have been added in this period. While the affluent and the urban middle-class with a capacity to pay have been catered to by the mushrooming.

Various organizations are coming together for improvements in health care and technology plays a crucial role to facilitate this. Information and communications Technology provides hosts of solutions for successful implementation of these changes.

Rich people depend upon Private healthcare providers and Corporate Hospital Groups; the economically weaker sections of the society are dependent on the trust hospitals and NGOs.

Not-for-Profit Trust hospitals established by various NGOs, Missionaries and religious groups have a significant presence in India and have over the years played a key role in bridging the healthcare gap particularly for the under-privileged. The healthcare trusts infrastructure is very wide and ranges from 5- bed nursing homes to 1000-bed teaching and super-specialty hospitals.

The healthcare services in the district are predominantly centered on the J. L. N. Medical College Bhagalpur. There are many small and medium sized hospitals in the district which is not able to meet the demand in the region owing to equipment break-downs and lack of qualified manpower. People are dependent on government medical facilities and private clinics in Bhagalpur for their healthcare needs. J.P. Multispeciality Hospital (OPC) Private Limited proposes to establish a 100 bed Specialty Hospital with Medical, Surgical and Laboratory facilities. The hospital is to be located in Bhagalpur at an estimated project cost of INR 11 crores. The project will be a private hospital and function with cash generated from its operations.