Trinath & Avinash Shahi
Port Blair, Apr 26: Shortage of medical staffs has hamstringed the functioning of Primary Health Centre of Billyground, which cater to people of a large area in Middle Andaman.
According to reports the Primary Health Centre Billyground is presently lacking the support staff and nurses required to run the health centre at full fledged capacity.
As of now PHC Billyground has only three staff nurses instead of six, which is the available number of requirement due to which the present nurses has to do overtime and the situation is that sometime no nurse is available in the Health Centre during night or even in the afternoon at times.
Not only staff nurses the PHC has a long list of vacant positions of ward boy, an in house cook, Allopathic Pharmacist, Ayurvedic Pharmacist, surveillance workers, PHM and LH, shortage of NM, lab attendant and assistant. Even out of the two ambulances provided to the hospital one is of no use as it suffers breakdown frequently.
Talking to Andaman Sheekha, patients pointed out that the Primary Health Centre Billy ground is a health centre only for name actually it handles more patients that Mayabunder District Hospital and Rangat CHC.
“Due to lack of staff the present staffs has to go through a hectic work routine, due to the absence of cook the in house patients suffer a lot,” alleged a patient.
Dr Ajit Kumar In-charge PHC Billyground has reportedly sent several signals to the DHS but no response has been received from the DHS yet, it is reported.
According to locals few PRI members gathered in front of the PHC on Tuesday and warned about a massive Chakka Jam if no proper steps are taken to deal with this situation.
When contacted Dr. S P Burma, the Director Health Services told Andaman Sheekha that the recruitment is already under process and the delay is due to the Model Code of Conduct for Elections and as soon as the Elections are over, this issue will be solved, on top priority basis.
