Civic hospital doctors seek greener pastures

MUMBAI: The cardiology departments at Nair Hospital and Sion Hospital have been headless for some time, while their neurosurgery departments have been working with 50 per cent staff.
Even KEM Hospital, which has the only fully functioning cardiology department among the city''s threemajor civic hospitals, has yet to fill two vacancies for senior posts.
In a city where millions of people, even from the upper middle class, depend on the public health care system, the state of affairs in civic hospitals is an eye-opener. The past year alone has seen around 200 vacancies in the three civic hospitals, as senior doctors, who double up as lecturers and professors at the medical colleges attached to these hospitals, increasingly leave the public health system for greener pastures.
The situation is particularly bad in superspecialities like paediatric surgery, neuro-surgery and neonatology —indeed, the neo-natology department at Sion Hospital was derecognised last year by the Medical Council of India (MCI) for having less than 50 per cent staff.
KEM Hospital, which is counted among the leading teaching institutes in the country, faces a 25 per cent shortage of teaching doctors and 45 per cent paraclinical staff who man laboratories and other facilities.
Of the 403 teaching posts sanctioned, 85 are vacant. In the superspecialities, 18 out of 42 posts are vacant. The department of gastroenteritis is without a professor. "People are leaving for better prospects and we''re finding it difficult to fill their vacancies," says a senior doctor at KEM.
Nair Hospital has seven vacancies at the level of professor and 27 at the level of associate professor, mostly in superspecialities such as urology and endrocrinology. "We''re losing bright young doctors to private practice, as they canmake in one day what they would in one month in a public hospital," says a specialist.
Dr M.E. Yeolekar, dean of Sion Hospital, admits that 15 per cent of the posts in the hospital are vacant. "There has been a slow and steady increase in the number of vacancies over the past few years," he says. "We get good candidates for lecturer''s posts, but making them stick on for a few years is a problem—as is getting senior teachers."