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Social Services
Hospitals
During the last 40 years there has
been tremendous increase in the public health facilities, both preventive and
curative. In 1989, the public health institutions numbered 899, including
a state hospital,12 district hospitals,189 primary health centres, besides a
number of allopathic and Ayurvedic dispensaries and specialized medical
institutions. To meet the shortage of doctors, a medical college also
started functioning in 1967, which now has post-graduate teaching facilities in
some branches.
Death rate has come down by 70
percent due to various public health measures. The incidence of venereal
disease, which was about 17 percent in 1951, came down to 2 percent in
1989. Malaria and small pox have been eradicated. The T.B. control
programme has been a great success. People have taken enthusiastically to
the family planning programme and its interesting feature is that women have
out-numbered men in its acceptance.
Education
As against nearly 200 Educational
Institutions, mostly Primary Schools in 1948, the state had 9,112 educational
institutions including 38 colleges, 932 higher secondary and high schools, 1,068
middle schools and 7,074 primary schools in 1989. The enrollment in these
institutions was about 1,122,000 or about 26 percent of the entire state
population. The literacy percentage which was only 6.7 percent in 1951 and
31.32 percent in 1971, rose to 42.48 percent in 1989 and in 1991 it was 63.54
percent. The state got its first university in 1971.Then two more
universities, one for Agriculture and the other for Horticulture and Forestry
have come up at Palampur and Solan respectively.
Water supply
Drinking water supply poses a big
problem in Himachal. In the absence of wells due to high altitude terrain,
drinking water is mainly obtained from springs and streams. Being unhygienic,
it contributes to pollutions and spread of disease like hill dysentery.
The village being sparsely populated and distantly located, the arrangement of
clean drinking water poses the problem of high costs. In 1948, excepting
four towns, no other habitation in the Himachal had piped water supply. By
1989, drinking water through pipes was made available in about 15,000 villages
covering about 75 percent of the population.
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