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60% doctors post vacant, no heart care unit in government hospitals

Hindustan Times, Dehradun | By
Feb 09, 2018 09:27 PM IST

Uttarakhand is among bottom three state with most vacant positions of healthcare professionals.

All’s not well with the health sector in Uttarakhand, which has been found lagging on several indicators as per Niti Aayog’s Health Index Rankings announced Friday.

Patients lined up at a government hospital in Dehradun.(HT FILE)
Patients lined up at a government hospital in Dehradun.(HT FILE)

The mountain state is placed among the bottom three states, after Bihar and Chhattisgarh, having maximum vacant positions of the healthcare professionals in the government hospitals. The Himalayan state is yet to fill 60% positions of doctors while it has a deficit of 20% nurses.

Uttarakhand finds mention among those states that do not have a single functional cardiac care unit (CCU) in public hospitals. In contrast, the neighbouring Himachal Pradesh is at the top among all the states where CCU is available in more than 50% government hospitals.

The report took 2014-15 as the base year and 2015-16 as the reference year.

“Among the larger states, six — Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Haryana and Kerala — have shown a decline in performance from base year to reference year, despite some of them being among the top 10 in overall performance,” the report says.

The report released by Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant also dwells upon the administrative aspect. The health index report shows Uttarakhand is again among the three bottom states after Karnataka and Telangana where key officials such as principal secretary, mission director (National Health Mission) and director (health services) were replaced within 10 months.

The state fails to record 23% registration of the new births says the report. It says that 38% of the new deliveries in the state still take place at places other than the government hospitals.

The state has, however, shown some degree of marginal improvement in certain parameters. The report shows 65% HIV positive patients in the state have access to antiretroviral drugs in the government hospitals. Nonetheless, the National Health Policy 2017 sets a specific goal to achieve the global target to ensure medicines to 90% infected by 2020.

Considering the importance of the health sector, the chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat has kept the portfolio with him. Government spokesperson and cabinet minister Madan Kaushik says the change will be visible in next three years.

“The government is focusing on filling the vacant positions. We are continuously monitoring the health department as there are certain gaps” Kaushik said.

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