|
Guwahati: Assam, which has the highest maternal
mortality rate (MMR) in the country at 390 per 1,000 live births,
also faces a serious crunch of doctors. So the state is now
rolling out rural health workers, upgrading skills and making it
mandatory for medical students to practise in villages.
Prateek Hajela, mission director of the National Rural Health
Mission (NRHM), Assam, said the state has been adopting a host of
initiatives to tackle the issue.
"Lack of doctors and trained specialists, even nurses, is a huge
problem in Assam. I don't think lack of infrastructure is that big
a problem. I mean, we have first referral units (FRUs) which are
non-functional because of dearth of manpower," Hajela told IANS.
Admitting to the seriousness of the issue - of lack of manpower -
in the face of an already critical problem of high MMR, Assam has
thus been designing new courses and implementing new laws to
retain its human resources and upgrade the skills of existing
health workers.
"The Assam government's own health university, the Srimanta
Sankardeva University of Health Sciences, which was established in
2009, offers a three and a half year training programme, at the
end of which, one can practise as a rural health practitioner,"
Hajela said.
"It is a diploma programme and one can enrol right after Class 12.
These rural health practioners are posted in the sub centres and
health facilities in the village level, and are capable of
handling complicated deliveries, but not a C-section. That can
only be conducted by a specialist," he added.
Hajela said these health workers can largely fill the void left
behind by doctors. Three batches, constituting 300 students, are
already enrolled in this course.
Then again, considering that a number of medical students from
Assam go outside the state for specialisation, and then stay back
to work in bigger hospitals, the state decided to upgrade the
skills of existing doctors in government hospitals.
"We have created our own course which aims at skill upgradation of
doctors. It's a two-year diploma programme and will help enhance
his or her skills to deal with more complicated cases in a better
manner," Hajela said.
The course is approved by the Medical Council of India (MCI) and
will be on offer from this year.
According to Hajela, despite the course not giving doctors the tag
to practise as a gynaecologist, government hospital doctors "are
willing" to enroll.
To address the issue of dearth of nurses, the government has also
introduced a six-month course for Auxillary Nurse Midwife (ANM),
after which one will reach the same level as a General Nurse
Midwife (GNM).
"There is a dearth of doctors, paediatricians and nurses; and the
government knows that it cannot compete with the market when it
comes to luring these professionals. So we have to come up with
innovative techniques to either retain them or somehow plug the
hole," he said.
For instance, the government was in a dilemma when doctors did not
respond to its call to work in the river island Majuli in Assam
which desperately needed good health services. The health minister
even tweeted saying that monetary incentives were failing to do
the trick.
"The problem got sorted out after we offered Rs.75,000 per month
to specialists to work in the island," Hajela told IANS.
The state has, however, now made it mandatory for its medical
students to practise in a rural area for a year in order to be
eligible to do post-graduation in Assam. This has brought a fresh
lease of life to the primary health facilities in villages.
Tying up with medical colleges to spread awareness on various
issues, and giving them the role of mentoring is yet another
initiative. For a paediatric conference in the Karimganj district
for instance, the health department roped in the Silchar Medical
College.
Although Assam improved its MMR from 480 (2004-06) to 390, it is
still way above the national average of 212 - which, in itself, is
still far off from the Millennium Development Goal of bringing
down the MMR to 109 by the year 2015.
(Azera Parveen Rahman can be contacted at azera.rahman@gmail.com)
|
Comments
|
Quick links