A study reveals that patients visiting government hospitals in the state facing lot of inconvenience due to acute shortage of doctors in the state usually cause delay in treatment to patients also have to wait in queues for a long time during OPD. Most of the patients unable to afford costly medical treatment in private hospital are dependent on free medical facilities and free supply of medicines offered in government hospitals across the state. According to state health department information, in January 2022 the department had advertised vacancies for the posts of 1252 medical officers and made appointment of 847 doctors, of them as many as 163 candidates offered position of medical officer didn’t joined service and another 107 selected candidates refused to join duty and submit required documents join service in health department in the state as per government norms as such total number of 270 posts offered appointment as medical officer remained unfulfilled out of total number of 847 applicants selected for the post of medical officer in state health department.
Information reveals, there are 59 civil hospitals, 486 Primary Health Centres (PHC) and 119 Community Health Centres (CHC) in Haryana state having total number of 3305 medical officers including senior medical officers working in these government hospitals in urban as well as rural areas providing health services to nearly 2.75 crore people in the state, whereas according to population in the state there is requirement for minimum 27000 doctors apart from 235 posts of senior medical officers and nearly a thousand posts for medical officers in the state lying vacant at present. As usually said, desire to earn money compels young doctors either not to join government job or say good bye when they get offers from private sector hospitals for easy job conditions, better emoluments or start private practice. In order to improve health services in government hospitals, state government had offered services to retired doctors on contract basis but the experiment failed to bring desired results and was discontinued.
What to speak of PHC and CHC, there is heavy shortage of doctors even in district level civil hospitals in the state. Apart from medical experts in government hospitals there is often shortage of life saving drugs and important medicines in government hospitals to be supplied to the patients free of cost as claimed by the government and patients have to buy such medicines from the market. Information also reveals that in most of the government hospitals there is rare availability gynecologists, orthopedics, ENT and skin specialists to treat patients usually referred to other hospitals. As usually seen a doctors in government hospital have to attend between 250-300 patients daily.
According to health department data there is also shortage of doctors in government medical colleges in the state, the situation is as such in few government medical colleges in the state identified as against 920 posts of doctors in PGIMS Rohtak 403 posts are lying vacant, out of total number of 197 posts of doctors in Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College Karnal 93 posts are vacant at present. Similarly, in case of BPS Government Medical College Sonipat out of total number of 191 posts of doctors 83 posts are vacant and in case of SHKM Government Medical College Nuh (Mewat) out of total number of 361 posts of doctors 189 posts are lying vacant at present, In case of SABV Government Medical College Faridabad out of total number of 198 posts for the doctors 146 posts are vacant and in case of MA Medical College Agroha out of total number of 279 posts 68 posts are vacant.
When asked Dr. DS Jaspal former Indian Medical Association National Vice President and also past Haryana State IMA President the reason for young doctors not preferring jobs of medical officer in state health department, he was of opinion better service facilities, better pay scales and less work load are some of the reasons that impress young doctors to join service in private hospitals. He said, young doctors are unwilling to serve in rural areas, bear heavy work load, political interference and above all in many cases senior doctors are often deployed on postmortem and emergency duties not matching to their status which are some of the prime reasons even senior doctors do not want to work in government hospitals. He said, according to a recent report shortfall of 76.1% specialist doctors are working at CHC in rural areas. However, Dr Jaspal appreciated the role of present Health Minister (also Home Minister in the state) Anil Vij has improved the structure of health services in government hospitals in the state giving example of Civil Hospital Ambala Cantt in his Vidhan Sabha constituency also known as mini PGI in the state.
