On the occasion of flagged off 70 vehicles, including 63 ambulances, procured by Health Department under the National Health Mission, Chief Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed indicated that his Government was working on a comprehensive plan of modernizing State Health Services and requisitioning the services of qualified and reputed doctors besides making most modern equipment available to the hospitals in the State. He has a plan of opening Nursing Colleges in each district of the State to overcome the shortage of paramedical staff in the hospitals and healthcare centers of the State. In particular, we appreciate his intention of providing trained and qualified doctors to medical units in districts and remote parts of the State and not let them starve for medical assistance.
In these columns, we have brought Health Services under scanner more than once. Our purpose has been to draw the attention of the Government to very disappointing conditions in most of the district hospitals and Healthcare Centres in the State so much so that a large number of vacancies of doctors and paramedical staff remain vacant for years at end. The situation is going from bad to worse and immediate attention of the Government is needed. We hope that the appeal of the Chief Minister to the doctors from the State serving outside the State to come back and serve the people of the State will be heeded. The State Government promises to provide a number of advanced facilities to the doctors and to the patients as well.
The Chief Minister expressed his anguish at a very meager rather negligible financial assistance promised to patients of terminal disease like cancer. He has announced increment to the rotating corpus of this assistance to the tune of one crore rupees each for SKIMS Soura and Government Medical College Jammu. Government’s plan of converting two health institutions in all the constituencies of the state into Maternity & Childcare and Model Hospitals will be a big step towards providing much needed medical assistance to expectant mothers and infants in rural areas. Whatever improvement schemes in the healthcare sector are contemplated will be welcome when these are actually put on ground. But this should only be the beginning of a big plan of giving completely new shape to the Health Services in the State.
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