John Wilbert & Saurabh Singh
Port Blair, Aug 30: Even after several years of its inception, the District Hospital of the Mayabunder region, the R P Hospital, BJR Hospital of Car Nicobar and other CHCs and PHCs still do not have a sufficient number of specialist doctors like Gynaecologists, Paediatricians and Ophthalmologists.
This is hard to imagine about the pain and sufferings of people living in remote Islands, who often do not get the right treatment during the time of emergency. Getting the right treatment is still a distant dream for people of many remote Islands and many others, the only solution is to travel all the way to Port Blair for expert care.
There are thousands and thousands of people in Andaman And Nicobar islands, who can’t afford to travel to Port Blair for better treatment as they have no money for lodging and boarding at Port Blair
Since last several decades grassroot leaders, local media and general public have been pleading to atleast appoint a minimum number of specialists in all District Hospitals, CHCs and PHCs but for various reasons this remained a pie in the sky.
Now there seems to be some positive changes in Administration as the A&N Administration has approved the recruitment process of 19 new specialist Doctors.
In this regard when Andaman Sheekha Daily contacted Mr. Arjun Sharma, IAS, Secretary, Directorate of Health Services, informed that due to the shortage of Specialist Doctors earlier the Administration had completed the recruitment processes of 11 Specialist Doctors.
Mr. Arjun Sharma said that new appointments of Specialist doctors were carried out in which 03 posts of Anaesthetist, 05 posts of Medical Specialist, 04 posts of Specialist (Obst. and Gynae), 01 posts of surgical specialist, ENT Specialist, Pediatrician, and Ophthalmologist were notified and 16 candidates appeared for the interview. Of those 11 candidates were selected and are expected to join the service soon.
This month approval has been given for recruitments for more than 19 Specialist Doctors and within a week recruitment notice will be published on the website of Administration as well as in the newspapers, he added.
“If everything goes smoothly then immediately the specialist doctors will be posted at Diglipur, Mayabunder, Rangat, Bambooflat, Nicobar, Garacharma and Nancowrie”, the Secretary of Health added.
