Out of 1147 approved posts for specialist doctors in the state, only 493 were available in Uttarakhand.
Despite state of Uttarakhand going for the elections of 18 th Lok Sabha and the state entering 24 th year of attaining the separate state entity after 43 sacrifices and incessant struggle of thousands of activists dreaming for a state of Uttarakhand with integrity, transparency and corruption free, is today unfortunately lagging far behind in terms of delivering adequate facilities and treatment to its patients in various government hospitals as the specialists, surgeons and doctors are in extremely little numbers with people suffering badly and medical consequences in sight with little hope in the near future.
As a part of a study on the state of specialist doctors in 2021 in Uttarakhand, the SDC Foundation has released a report titled , “State of Specialist Doctors in Uttarakhand 2021” .
According to renowned social activist of Uttarakhand based at Dehradun famous for highlighting the burning issues of the Himalayan state with apt analysis and indepth study and prive Anoop Nautiyal has revealed that the study had highlighted the availability of 15 types of specialist doctors across 13 districts of Uttarakhand based on RTI data obtained from the Dept. of Medical, Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of Uttarakhand.
Forensic, skin and psychologist doctors remained the least available in the state. There was only 1 forensic expert in the state out of the approved posts of 25 doctors, 4 skin specialists out of 32 and 4 psychiatrists out of 28.
Out of 1147 approved posts for specialist doctors in the state, only 493 specialist doctors were available in Uttarakhand.
654 specialist doctor positions were yet to be filled as on 30th April, 2021 based on the RTI reply.
The study had shown a great imbalance between the distribution of specialist doctors amongst the districts. For example, there were no eye surgeons in the hill district of Champawat as against three approved positions whereas 11 eye surgeons were working in Dehradun as against the six approved positions.
“This was one of the major findings as per our study. We need to relook at the IPHS framework on distribution of medical workforce in the state. The study had clearly highlighted that hill districts were worst affected in terms of availability of specialist doctors compared to plain districts. We need to work out a strategy on evenly distributing the workforce of specialist doctors since not much has changed in the last two to three years in Uttarakhand on this front. This will ensure access to the health facilities”.
