Medical Teachers Association says no to Evening Clinics

Excelsior Correspondent

Members of Medical Teachers Association addressing a press conference at Jammu on Friday. -Excelsior/Rakesh

JAMMU, Mar 22: Annoyed over the Government move of banning private practice of the GMC faculty, the Medical Teachers Association (MTA) Jammu has refused to accept the offer for practice in the Evening Clinics, which are being set up shortly in the existing OPDs within the hospital premises.
“The Government move of banning private practice of doctors and open Evening Clinics will only create more chaos and make patients to suffer in the Government Medical College Hospitals which are already overloaded and not able to cope up with the situation,” said Dr Tariq Parvez Azad, president of Medical Teachers Association, Jammu, while talking to media persons, here today.
While elaborating, he said that the Government hospitals lack equipments, required para-medical staff and other infrastructure for providing satisfactory medical facilities to the patients while the additional burden of Evening Clinics would only multiply the existing problems and create more mess.
“The present state of affairs can be gauged from the fact that the administration has failed to provide even the basic amenities of Suture material for operations in the GMC Hospital while many important procedures and investigations are not performed owing to non-availability of small items, which are of paramount importance,” Dr Azad said and hastened to add that the faculty was in no way responsible for these shortcomings.
“It is the non-availability of these basic facilities which lead to poor patient care in the hospitals whereas un-necessarily fingers are pointed towards the doctors who are the basic service providers,” he claimed.
Justifying the private practice by the doctors beyond their duty hours, Dr Sunil Kotwal sought to explain that the patients are benefited by timely consultation by spending least money in least time. “All this happens beyond our duty hours and at the cost of our own time,” he said and also pointed out that pay scale of GMC faculty here are lowest in the country.
Dr S K Bali, Dr Rajiv Gupta and some other members of the Medical Teachers Association, who were also present in the press conference, claimed that the opening of paid Evening Clinics would be discrimination with poor people.