Health service loses sheen

THIRUVANATHAPURAM: The total number of vacancies of doctors in the health service is 831. There were 750 rank holders in the assistant surgeon list of the State Public Service Commission. PSC send advice memos for all candidates in the list but only 380 turned up for the interview. However, at the time of joining only 275 turned up.
The state health department is finding it hard to fill up the vacancies.“In the last two years there were no postings from the PSC in the health service. But when the PSC gave advice memo, after this government came to power, only few doctors turned up.They are reluctant in joining the health service,'' said health minister K K Shylaja.
The health service has become unattractive option for the doctors especially specialists. “The doctors who are completing post-graduation or Doctorate in Medicine (DM) would have turned 35. When they join health service the candidate would be posted in hospitals where his speciality is not available. In many instances the doctors get posted in casualty wings of remote community health centres. Unless they are given posting in district or general hospitals, the specialists will not be ready to join the health service,'' said Dr A K Raoof, state secretary of Kerala Government Medical Officers Association (KGMOA).
“If an ENT specialist or a neurologist is appointed at a remote community health centre and asked to man the casualty duty who will stick to the health service? We are losing many doctors after joining because of this reason.The major crisis faced by the health service is want of specialists. Their pay package is not attractive when compared to the private sector, said Dr G S Vijayakrishnan, secretary, IMA, Thiruvananthapuram, and an ENT specialist with the health service. After the LDF government came to power 41 assistant surgeons were promoted as civil surgeons. Similarly 199 specialists were also given promotion.
The state health service still follows the staff pattern of 1961 and there is a huge demand for revising it. But successive governments which had no interest in reviewing the staff pattern created new posts. A total of 3,512 new posts were created during the period between 2006 and 2011 in the health department alone. The number was 2,622 during the period 2011-2016. Of this 85 assistant surgeon posts were created in 2006-11 and 310 posts in 2011-16.
“These posts were not created scientifically and as a result many are lying vacant now,“ said Dr A K Raoof.
In November, around 100 doctors are getting retired from the health service and this is likely to cause another crisis. Unless timely promotions are given, these senior level posts will remain vacant like the last five years.