BJP State president KV Singh Deo and other party leaders, former Assembly Deputy Speaker Rama Chandra Panda and former Minister Ramakrushna Pattnaik met the striking junior doctors at the MKCG Medical College ground and discussed with them on their agitation, which reached the fifth day on Monday with the undergraduate doctors joining the cease-work movement.
The leaders said that even after 52 years of its establishment, this medical college, which caters the health services to the people of south Odisha, all OPD rooms of its hospital are yet to be made air-conditioned. The college hospital has no basic healthcare instruments like ECG monitor and glucometer and there are dozens of vacant positions in various departments.
Similarly, posts of a large number of grassroots-level positions like nursing staff, attendants and dressing persons are lying vacant forcing local patients to go to Visakhapatnam-based hospitals. As a result of an acute shortage of drinking water, patients are forced to take contaminated water, they alleged.
The BJP leaders urged the Chief Minister to fulfil the genuine demands of the doctors and restore normalcy in health service. The MKCG Medical College has 750 MBBS students, 150 house officers and 300 postgraduate students, besides a number of para-clinical and diploma students.
The junior doctors demand tentative PICU with all advanced live saving instruments like ventilators, defibrilliators, ABG machine, etc., till the original PICU construction is completed as this would substantially reduce the tension between working PG students and patients’ attendants.
The other demands include air conditioning of the OPD rooms, installation of advanced diagnostic modalities like ISC, HPlC and flow Cytometry in Pathology Department, repair and replacement of all defunct air-conditioners of Paediatrics and Pathology Departments, Hemantology and Cytology Sections, library and seminar rooms, posting of sufficient nursing staff, attendants, dressers, provision of adequate OT tables and OT lights in all minor OTs and supply of sufficient suture materials.