Vijayawada: Government doctors in medical colleges have opposed a move to surrender nearly 300 resident medical officers, casualty medical officers and tutors in 11 such institutions to the Vaidya Vidhana Parishad that runs several health centres in the state.
On an average, each government medical college attached with a hospital takes care of around 3,000 patients a day. Some of these institutions handle over 2,800 patients in the out-patient ward. Of these, over 20 per cent cases related to casualty. Patients involved in road accidents and other health emergency cases are brought to the Casualty for medical treatment.
Resident medical officers in the government medical colleges take care of the day-to-day administration of the allied hospitals while casualty medical officers attend to the patients. Tutors with the qualification of PG diploma or degree in medicine support the health care services in these hospitals.
Notably, only one female qualified doctor works in the emergency section for the entire state, in Guntur Medical College, while such posts in the other medical colleges remain vacant.
Against this backdrop, the state health department proposed to surrender RMOs, CMOs and tutors to the APVVP so as to avail their services at primary and community health centres and also at area and district hospitals.
Government teaching doctors say they are already handling a large number of patients at the MCHs despite a shortage of manpower. Withdrawing their services will badly affect the functioning of the hospitals at the administration and healthcare levels, they say.
They say that in 2006 and 2016 too, the then governments had come up with similar proposals but withdrew them due to resistance from doctors.
AP government doctors’ association general secretary Dr Jayadheer said, “We will bring the issue to the notice of the government.”
