Punjab Govt deputes nurses in place of doctors at rural dispensaries

Vishav Bharti

Chandigarh, February 4

The state government has asked nurses and Ayurveda practitioners to work in place of doctors in several rural dispensaries.

In recent orders, the Senior Medical Officer, Hoshiarpur, has posted five Community Health Officers (CHOs) at subsidiary health centres (SSC), where the posts of MBBS doctors fell vacant after they were transferred to Aam Aadmi Clinics.

The CHOs including, Munish Rana has been posted at Garhi Mansowal, Amardeep Kaur at Dadyal, Kiranjit Kaur at Saila Khurd, Madhubala at Paddi Sura Singh and Naina Bharti at Behbalpur. They will replace the Rural Medical Officers who were MBBS doctors and were registered with the Punjabi Medical Council as well as with the National Medical Commission.

It is a gross violation of the National Medical Commission Act, 2019, which allows only the registered medical practitioners to prescribe medicines. There is no provision for nurses to either prescribe or even dispense the medicines. To dispense the medicine, one needs to be a registered pharmacist. Nurses can only distribute medicines acting on the prescription of a doctor.

A few years ago, Punjab had designated a large number of nurses whose qualification was just auxiliary nursing midwifery as the CHOs. Their main work was to distribute the medicines prescribed by doctors.

Not only the rural dispensaries but the situation of healthcare services is such that Civil Surgeon, Muktsar, has posted three CHOs (nurses) to Aam Aadmi Clinics.

According to the orders issued by him, CHO Jaswinder Kumar has been posted at Aam Aadmi Clinic, Panniwala, Preeti Raj at Bhai Ka Kera and Sunil Kumar at Kandu Khera.

Even Ayurveda doctors are being posted at Aam Aadmi Clinics and being asked to prescribe allopathic medicine for which they are neither trained nor they are allowed under the law. Ayurveda Medical Officer Amit Kumar has been posted at Aam Aadmi Clinic, Raipur Rasulpur.

Significantly, two years ago, the CHOs had demanded that they should be allowed private practice. But the Director, National Health Mission, which employs the CHOs, had given clear instructions to the Civil Surgeons that since the CHOs did not have prescription rights so they can’t be allowed to prescribe medicines.

Public health experts see it as a disastrous step. Dr Pyare Lal Garg, a public health expert, said how a person, who had not been trained to diagnose and treat the disease, prescribe medicine. “It is nothing, but making mockery of medical science,” he said.

All attempts to contact Health Minister Dr Balbir Singh remained futile.