Understaffed hospitals!

Healthcare has remained a war cry for the incumbent administration in Jammu and Kashmir as every bureaucrat in the Lieutenant Governor’s government has been talking about improvement in the health facilities and also claiming that healthcare was the top priority of the government. However, a startling revelation has come to the fore through a Right to Information Act (RTI) query, which states that over 70 posts of doctors and 332 posts of paramedics are lying vacant in different districts of Kashmir. The huge vacant posts of the doctors and paramedical staff in the hospitals are indeed an outcome of the present scenario. Many a time, the people were seen raising queries over the absence of the doctors at the hospital, but the RTI reply has cleared the image of the administration’s priority as the pivotal issue to strengthen the healthcare facility seems to have been ignored by the government so far. In Srinagar district only, 30 posts of Medical Officers and 40 posts of paramedic staff are lying vacant with the office of Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Srinagar. Similarly, at JLNM hospital, two posts of doctors and 20 paramedics are lying vacant so far. Two doctors and 11 paramedic posts are also lying vacant at Gousia Hospital Srinagar, indicating that even the Srinagar hospitals where the rush of patients remain too high compared to the other hospitals, have been ignored, thus simultaneously affecting the healthcare. It is the time when the government should work to ensure that all the vacant posts are filled forthwith so that the claims of the administration about better healthcare services to the people are ensured on the ground.