Decision to send doctors to all health facilities not likely to succeed
Although Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal in his first address to the Parliament pledged to depute doctors to all health care facilities, health experts are sceptical the government’s decision will materialise.
They said it would be very difficult to compel doctors to serve in districts where they do not want to go. Several doctors quit service after they were deputed to remote districts in the past. Moreover, the government health system is plagued by mismanagement.
For instance, 26 doctors have been serving in eight primary health care centres of Kathmandu. The District Public Health Office said that it does not even have sufficient chairs for doctors.
“We do not need all the doctors deployed by the government,” Chief of Kathmandu DPHO Mahendra Prasad Shrestha said. He said that the PHCC in Kathmandu neither has place and chairs to give to doctors nor do they need so many doctors to serve patients.
He said the DPHO has to take attendance of doctors deployed by MoH. Most of the doctors deployed in the PHCCs of Kathmandu and nearby districts use power of influential people like senior bureaucrats, lawmakers, ministers or the political leaders.
Likewise, all the posts of consultant doctors in Sub-regional Hospital, Dadeldhura has been vacant for years. Half of the posts of medical officers in the hospital have been vacant for years. Out of 38 posts of consultant doctors and medical officers, only nine medical officers have been serving in the hospital.
Patients of Dadeldhura and nearby districts have to go to Dhangadi or Nepalgunj for consultant service, which takes eight to 14 hours to reach by bus. “Due to lack of consultant doctors in our hospital, doctors are compelled to refer even critical cases to Dhangadi and Nepalgunj, Chief of District Public Health Office, Dadeldhura, Birkha Bahadur Shahi, said.
He said that some critical patients might have died on the way to Dhangadi and Nepalgunj, due to lack of service in the Sub-regional Hospital.
The MoH had vowed to fill all the vacant posts within three months, but the promise of the Minister for Health has yet to materialise. “We are working to fill all the vacant posts,” Spokesperson at the MoH Bhogendra Dottel, said.
He claimed that the ministry is serious about filling the vacant post of doctors in health facilities.
According to Dottel, the ministry is planning to hire additional 100 doctors as back-up.
They will be sent to health facilities that lack doctors. He informed that MoH has called a meeting tomorrow in which representative of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of General Administration have been invited to discuss the issue.
