Staff crunch hampers services at Anantapur government hospital

ANANTAPUR: Lack of adequate staff, including the absence of heads, has badly hampered services in the Government General Hospital and the recently established super specialty hospital.

The general hospital has been without a regular superintendent even during the Covid-19 crisis. In a belated move, the medical and health department posted a senior doctor from Kurnool medical college as superintendent three days back. However, in a bizarre twist, the official received transfer orders to Kadapa medical college even before he took charge here.

With the local doctors expressing unwillingness to act as in-charge superintendent, the general hospital faces staff crunch at various levels. The general hospital gets more than 2,000 patients at OP ward every day while patients from the district and surrounding Karnataka depend on it for emergency medical facilities.

It may be noted that Anantapur general hospital is flooded with patients and unable to provide quality medical aid forcing the critical patients to rush to Bangalore.

Meanwhile, the super specialty hospital was sanctioned at Guntur as part of post-bifurcation projects to Andhra Pradesh. It was to cater to those in the coastal areas while the Anantapur hospital was to meet the medical needs of Rayalaseema region.

Upgrading of the Government Medical College was taken up under ‘Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY)’ under phase-III. The super specialty hospital was designed to accommodate eight special wings- cardiology, neurology, nephrology, medical gastroenterology and surgical gastroenterology.

Sources said the general hospital authorities had sent proposals seeking filing up of 179 professors and assistant professors posts apart from 280 nursing and non-technical staff.

CPI State secretary K Ramakrishna demanded the government to concentrate on filling all vacancies to ensure quality medical facilities to the people of Rayalaseema.