The permission of Medical Council of India (MCI) for admission of first batch of students in MBBS course in the Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) and laying of foundation stones of medical colleges in Pithoragarh, Kotdwar, Rudrapur and Bhagwanpur are some of the bright spots in medical and health field in the year 2016. However like in past the state health services continued to reel under the acute shortage of doctors, this year also.
The year started in anticipation of MCI visit for the all important letter of Permission (lOP) for the nascent GDMC. The team visited the associated hospital and medical college and gave lOP for the college, on the basis of which the college gave admission to 150 students in I year MBBS course. In another good news the MCI gave lOP for a private medical college, Subharati Medical college of Dehradun. The state government merged the erstwhile district hospital and female hospital of Dehradun to the medical college due to which the criteria of an associated hospital for medical college was fulfilled but it resulted in chaos in the hospital due to delayed budget and other operational problems. Apart from this the patients faced problems due to lack of a district hospital in Dehradun. With the state bound for election in early part of 2017, the Harish Rawat government was on an election mode for most part of 2016. In its pre-election sops the government announced medical colleges at Pithoragarh, Bhagwanpur, Kotdwar and Rudrapur this year.
Meanwhile the people of the state continued to face problem due to acute shortage of doctors in the state health services. The departmental data reveals that as many as 1615 posts of total 2711 posts of doctors are lying vacant at present. A staggering 60 percent of vacant posts have rendered the entire health system of state seriously ill (see list). In the remote and mountainous parts of the state the situation of absence of doctors is very alarming and in almost all such places the health services are non existent. All efforts of the state government like grant of DACP, hill allowance and other benefits have failed to attract doctors to the health services. To add salt to the injury scores of new doctors who had filled bonds with state government as it provided subsided medical education to them absconded from duty while hundreds of others preferred to pay the bond amount then serving in mountainous location. A desperate state government is now trying to recruit doctors from south Indian states, dental doctors and allow the Ayurveda doctors to prescribe allopathic medicines so that so semblance of order could be established in health services of mountainous areas.
The state government introduced the II phase of Mukhyamantri Swasthya Bima Yojna (MSBY), the comprehensive health insurance scheme and increased the amount of insurance per family per year Rs 1.75 lakh from earlier Rs 50000. Some operational glitches and less number of empanelled hospitals nevertheless took much of the sheen out of the scheme. Many believe that with more than 13 lakh beneficiaries this scheme alone had a capacity to act as game changer for Congress government in ensuing elections but its bad implementation undid much of the advantage.