Tanda medical college overflows with patients

Lalit Mohan

The crumbling health infrastructure at the ground level in Himachal is taking its toll on premier health institutions like Tanda medical college. The medical colleges that are supposed to attend to medical emergencies are being forced to cater to general patients because most of the hospitals at the field level are referring patients to the institute.

Tanda medical college is overflowing with patients. The medical college administration is being forced to adjust two patients on one bed and, at times, three patients on a single bed. The maximum problem is being faced by the medical college in the Gynaecology and the Paediatrics departments. 

The medical college has just 45 beds in the Gynaecology Department. However, the number of patients coming daily to the medical college is much more due to which multiple patients are being admitted against the available facilities.

The principal of Tanda medical college, Dr Bhanu Awasthi, admitted that they had to adjust two to three patients to a bed at times in the Gynaecology and the Paediatrics departments due to high intake of patients. He said since a large numbers of patients were coming to the medical college, they couldn’t say no to them.

Dr Bhanu told the Himachal Tribune that the daily outdoor patient intake in the medical college was about 1,500 patients. Generally, all the 850 beds in the hospital were packed to capacity.

Sources said the number of patients was increasing in the medical college because the zonal hospitals and CHCs were shifting their responsibility to the medical college.

The government was now trying to check the menace and restrict the hospitals that were referring even normal health cases to Tanda medical college. The Secretary (health) has written to the Tanda medical college authorities to provide data regarding the hospitals that were referring patients to Tanda medical college. The sources said the idea of the government to indentify and fix responsibility on doctors of zonal hospitals, sub-divisional-level hospitals and CHCs for referring patients with normal ailments to Tanda medical college.

Vacant posts of doctors, lack of norms in Community Health Centres (CHCs) and Primary Health Centres (PHCs) had also marred the health infrastructure at the ground level in Kangra district.

According to the data collected by the Himachal Tribune, there were 315 sanctioned posts of doctors in Kangra district. Out of these, 86 posts are lying vacant. Highly placed sources in the Health Department said the number of vacancies was much more because many doctors were posted on deputation in medical colleges or were doing PG courses.

The previous Congress government upgraded a lot of PHCs to CHCs in the district. However, the status of these PHCs had changed just on paper. According to the norms of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), the PHCs and CHCs were created so that there should be at least six doctors at the CHC level, including a gynaecologist and a paediatrician. The idea behind creating the PHCs and CHCs was to reduce the infant- mortality rate and provide people in the rural areas health services at the ground level.

In many of CHCs, upgraded in the past few years, the number of sanctioned posts of doctors was just two or three. The CHC, Indora, has just three sanctioned posts against the norm of six. Similarly, the CHC, Rehan, has just two sanctioned posts, CHC, Gangath, three, CHC, Ray, two, CHC, Dadasiba, three, CHC, Rakkar, two and CHC, Nagrota Surian, two. With this number of doctors, the upgraded CHCs are only providing services of a PHC despite their upgraded status.