Sun Mar 02 18:31:42 UTC 2025: ## Tamil Nadu Faces Severe Shortage of Village Health Nurses, Impacting Maternal and Child Healthcare

**Chennai, March 3, 2025** – Tamil Nadu is grappling with a critical shortage of Village Health Nurses (VHNs), jeopardizing maternal and child healthcare services across the state. Estimates suggest a vacancy rate nearing 50% in some districts, leaving overburdened existing nurses struggling to manage their workload.

The state has 8,713 Health Sub Centres (HSCs), ideally each staffed with one VHN. While health officials report approximately 2,500 vacancies, VHN associations claim the figure exceeds 3,000. This shortage forces many nurses to cover populations exceeding 10,000, with some managing two or three HSCs simultaneously.

The situation is exacerbated by extensive data entry requirements on multiple government portals, including the Pregnancy and Infant Cohort Monitoring and Evaluation (PICME) system, the Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy Maternity Benefit Scheme portal, and the U-WIN immunization portal. This administrative burden, coupled with aging equipment and a lack of recent training, has led to widespread stress and health issues among VHNs. Many nurses report working late into the night to complete data entry, often using personal mobile phones due to malfunctioning or returned laptops.

P. Nirmala, State president of the Tamil Nadu Public Health Nurses Federation, urged immediate action, including filling vacancies, establishing more HSCs to accommodate population growth, and deploying dedicated data entry operators in Primary Health Centres.

Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, T.S. Selvavinayagam, acknowledged the challenges, highlighting efforts to improve the PICME portal’s user-friendliness and speed, and utilizing existing data entry operators for U-WIN data entry. He also mentioned initiatives to increase institutional-level immunization coverage to alleviate the burden on field staff. However, a pending court case regarding VHN recruitment remains an obstacle. The impact of this severe VHN shortage on infant and maternal mortality rates is a growing concern.

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