Doctors Meet Health Minister-Published in The Hindu-4th August

Doctors pour out their woes before the Minister
Correspondent
KORAPUT: Several drugs that are of no use have been piled up in the Primary Health Centres, while acquiring those required for treating the poor remains a distant dream. The doctors of Koraput district poured their woes before the Health Minister Sanatan Bishi during an interaction in the district headquarters hospital at Koraput on Saturday.
Further there was an acute shortage of doctors in the region, particularly in the rural areas.
The problem could however be resolved by changing the drug procurement policy with transferring the power of purchasing the required medicines to the districts rather than keeping all the power at the State headquarter, they added.
Discussing on the irrational transfer policy of the Health Ministry, Niranjan Mishra, a doctor in the district headquarter hospital said that many doctors were wiling to work in the rural areas provided there was any specific transfer policy to relieve them after a certain period of service.
No grievance cell
Moreover the Government had lacked a proper grievance redressal system to listen to the plight of doctors and other people working in the health sector, Santanu Kumar Das, another doctor who had to struggle for 14 years to get the sanction for the 30 days’ leave that was granted to him by the State Government to attend a workshop in Japan in 1993.
“I am prepared to handover the Gandhi award and merit certificate given in Japan if they can grant the required sanction of leave from the government”, Dr. Das pleaded before the Minister.
While the Minister supported the doctors while assuring to hold discussion at higher level for the executive accountability to minimise the sufferings of the medicos working in the government hospitals, he was informed by the doctors that the promises that were made by the State Government in the last year during the epidemic diarrheoa at Dasamantpur block of Koraput district to fill up the vacancies and building of better infrastructure in the health centres was yet to be fulfilled .
The Minister was shocked to listen that the line department in the district administration had come up only with a single project after 3 years of placing the funds from NRHM.
The line departments who had been assigned to complete the work in the PHCs were not even consulting the concerned health officials in the district before planning for the construction and carrying out other developmental works, Sasmita Samantray, DPM, NRHM added.
While the Minister, putting all the blame on the degraded operating system in the State, urged the doctors not to go with their mass resignation from 21st August, members of the pharmacists’ association warned to go on mass leave from August 9 if their demands including a hike in their pay scale was not considered