Acute shortage of trained medical personnel in rural India

India's rural poor may soon have to rely on divine intervention to help them recover from illness as the health centres supposed to serve them run critically short of trained staff. The country's 22,669 primary health centres, the first port of call for the sick in rural areas, are a sorry picture, thanks to an acute shortage of trained medical personnel.

According to the recent National Rural Health Mission report, nearly 8% PHCs don't have a doctor while nearly 39% were running without a lab technician and about 17.7% without a pharmacist. The PHCs are supposed to have one medical officer supported by paramedical staff.
To compound the problem, PHCs in some states don't have adequate labour rooms and operation theatres. While not a single of UP's 3,660 PHCs have either a labour room or an operation theatre, the number stands at 208 labour rooms (13%) and 218 (13%) OTs in Bihar's 1,641 PHCs, 105 (20%) LRs and 50 (10%) OTs in Chhattisgarh's 518 PHCs and 131 (14%) LRs and 108 (12%) OTs in Kerala's 909 PHCs.

The condition of 3,910 community health centres, supposed to provide specialised medical care, is equally appalling. Out of the sanctioned posts, about 59.4% of surgeons, 45% of obstetricians and gynaecologists, 61.1% of physicians and 53.8% of paediatricians were found to be vacant. Moreover, there is a shortfall of 70.2% specialists at the CHCs. The report says, “Clearly, there is a huge challenge to meet the shortfall for rural health infrastructure, specially the manpower.”

Courtesy:timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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