E-Paper
Shortage of docs hits JE patients
INSENSITIVE AND neglectful attitude of the medical and health officials has left the patients of suspected Japanese Encephalitis (JE) at god?s mercy. Even as the death toll continues, the JE ward at Subhash Chandra Bose District Hospital is closed due to dearth of doctors and medical staff. On the other side, there is no nurse to take care of the patients in the two-paediatric wards of the BRD Medical College. Meanwhile, inflow of suspected JE patients continued here with 13 new patients brought from different districts of the division.
INSENSITIVE AND neglectful attitude of the medical and health officials has left the patients of suspected Japanese Encephalitis (JE) at god’s mercy. Even as the death toll continues, the JE ward at Subhash Chandra Bose District Hospital is closed due to dearth of doctors and medical staff. On the other side, there is no nurse to take care of the patients in the two-paediatric wards of the BRD Medical College.
Meanwhile, inflow of suspected JE patients continued here with 13 new patients brought from different districts of the division. Three more patients succumbed to the dreaded disease in the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 124 in the last four months. So far 727 patients have been brought here for treatment from different districts. At present 104 suspected JE patients are undergoing treatment at the medical college.
Dearth of paramedical staff, nurses and consultants along with resident doctors, have made the matters worse. The divisional commissioner and the district magistrate are paying only lip service to the JE patients. They promised that 10 doctors and other paramedical staff from provincial medical services would be deployed at the medical college but so far not a single PMS doctor or paramedical staff has joined the medical college.
In the two paediatric wards there are 218 patients undergoing treatment but not a single nurse has been deployed there to take care of the patients in the night shift. In absence of nurses, junior doctors attend to patients from one bed to the other.
It is to be noted that the government in May this year carried out anti-JE mass vaccination. Since then government officials were busy claiming that after vaccination JE was well under control. They claimed that this year the patients of coxsakie were brought here at the medical college.
However, the pathological test of serum to confirm the virus was suspended due to paucity of funds. Sources said that serum was being examined at Sanjay Gandhi PGI in Lucknow but due to shortage of funds the process had been stopped.
