Major reshuffle on cards in health department

Srinagar, Oct 22: To ease the burden on city hospitals, the Health department is going for a major reshuffle to strengthen the understaffed health care centres in far-flung areas in Jammu and Kashmir.
Sources in the civil secretariat told that health department has sought the list of overstaying doctors and deficiency of medicos in hospitals and other health care centres of the state.
They said the department was making a list of doctors who have not served in rural areas so far so that they could be sent to rural areas. “The step is aimed at decrease in referral cases of patients and would reduce the burden on city hospitals,” a senior official of the Health department said.
Official figures reveal that in Rural Health, J&K is facing dearth of almost 50 percent manpower, especially doctors.
The figures say that state has deficiency of around 7,000 employees including doctors, resulting the health sector continuous to get suffer.
Earlier, the government had issued an order in which it was mandatory for a doctor to serve in rural areas for strengthening of health centres in far-flung areas in the state.
Ironically, the order was not implemented on the ground after most of the doctors opposed the move, who were willing to serve only in district hospitals and various hospitals in Srinagar and Jammu district.
The official said all the overstaying doctors will be transferred very soon to overcome the dearth of doctors in rural areas. He said the reshuffle will take place in all 22 districts of the state.
“Those doctors who have served in cities only will be sent to rural areas to strengthen the understaffed hospitals in rural areas. Every doctor has to serve now some time in rural area,” he said.
He said he will make the doctors accountable to work for the welfare of the people.
The Jammu and Kashmir has already deficiency of 1,700 health institutions. Kashmir lacks 42 Community Health Centres (CHC), 122 Primary Health Centres (PHCs) and 898 Sub-Centres (SCs) as per population norms presenting a dismal picture of the health scenario of the State. Similarly, the Directorate of Health Services, Jammu, is deficient by 22 CHCs, 79 PHCs and 594 SCs.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)