E Arun & Tarun Kartick
Port Blair, Jun 16: The lone referral hospital of A & N Islands, the G B Pant is presently suffering from acute deficiency of Surgeons. According the Health Services only two Surgeons are available in G B Pant at present, which is causing unwanted delay in operations of many patients.
In many cases patients, who are in need of urgent operation, are made to wait for several weeks for their surgery. There were cases in past where patients had to wait for more than one month for their operations.
Troubled patients presently have only two options left, first to go back home and wait for several weeks and second to get himself/herself operated from Private Hospitals, paying lakhs of rupees.
But for those who don’t have money for their treatment in private hospitals, especially Islanders from remote Islands, have no other option than to wait for their turn.
Here the Health Department is also helpless as the authorities have to run the show with the help of only two surgeons, which is obviously very less. Not only this, the DHS has 39 posts of Specialists vacant and hence the general public of these Islands are ultimately suffering the burnt.
When contacted the Director of Health Services, Dr. S K Paul said that the matter has already been communicated to the Ministry by the Administration and it is expected that soon these Islands will get more specialists.
“Of course there is a delay in many cases as we give top priority to emergency cases. For Emergency operations often we have to shift the dates of delay the dates of other patients, who can wait,” Dr. Paul said.
He added that in G.B Pant Hospital two kinds of surgeries are done, one Emergency Surgeries & second Elective Surgeries. Emergency surgeries are done at any time, day or night while elective surgeries are done only on two elective OT days i.e on Tuesday & Thursdays.
“In elective cases patients are investigated and pre-anesthetic check up is done and dates are given on first come first serve basis. In G B Pant Hospital there are only two OT days in a week allotted for elective cases for General Surgery Specialist and the rest days except Saturday are allotted to other specialists Ike Obst & Gynecology, ENT and Ophthalmology,” he said.
However, with all these drawbacks the G B Pant Hospital has been able to perform nearly 1397 elective surgeries since January 2012 to May 2013. Not only this, every month the G B Pant Hospital is carrying out nearly 85 elective surgeries, which is a commendable feat.
As the Health Department has shown remarkable professionalism by doing best with limited resources now the ball is on the court of Administration to pursue the matter with the concerned Ministry and get all these 39 posts of specialists filled as early as possible so that no one has to wait for weeks for their operation. Until them it seems that poor patients, waiting for their elective surgeries, will have to suffer a little more.
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