Not enough docs to man hospitals

The state health department had recently recruited 373 doctors. However,nearly 100 refused to join duty. As a result,the department has been forced to restart the recruitment process for the additional vacancies.

“There is a shortage of doctors in government hospitals in most of the states. However,we are trying to revise our working conditions to attract doctors to serve in Haryana,” said health minister Rao Narender Singh.

He added that the state government was also looking at various means adopted by other states to hold back the doctors. “We have decided not to encourage doctors to go out on deputation to other states or union territories. Also we may work out a special package for those who want to serve in rural hospitals,” he said.

Financial commissioner and principal secretary,health,Navraj Sandhu said the Centre too was apprised of the problem that the state governments were facing in recruiting doctors. “They have come up with certain suggestions which we are looking at,” she added.

According to the figures tabled in the Vidhan Sabha in the March this year there were 475 vacant posts in the various primary health centres,community health centres and the general hospitals in the state.

The department’s advertisement to recruit 373 doctors met with a lukewarm response — only 550 doctors had shown interest in taking up a job.

“Out of the selected candidates,many have not joined. We will start the recruitment process again,” said the minister. He added that most of the candidates were interested in joining hospitals in Panchkula or Gurgaon or areas which were close to these two places.

In order to override a similar problem,the Punjab government had last year graded rural areas and assigned marks to the various kind of rural postings for MBBS doctors These marks would be counted during admission to the MD courses offered in government medical colleges in the state. “We can look at the Punjab experiment as well,” said the minister.