ROURKELA: Grappling with shortage of teaching and technical staff, the Sundargarh Government Medical College and Hospital (SGMCH) has been dealt with a double whammy after the National Medical Commission (NMC) flagged the manpower deficiencies and directed the institution to comply with its requirements.
The NMC sent a notice to the SGMCH on June 30 seeking compliance within 45 days. It largely cited deficiencies regarding gaps in human resources.
Official sources said the SGMCH, set up to cater to the critical and advanced healthcare needs of the tribal-dominated district and its adjoining areas, has 180 sanctioned teaching posts for 100 MBBS seats and a 500-bed hospital. However, 57 teaching posts are reportedly vacant. Several teaching departments including microbiology, physiology, ENT, ophthalmology and biochemistry as well as clinical departments like orthopaedics and radiodiagnosis have no professors.
Despite the NMC’s mandatory stipulations, the departments of emergency medicine and physical medicine and rehabilitation are yet to function fully due to shortage of manpower. Sources said the government has also not posted technical staff at the SGMCH. The departments concerned are instead functioning with a few contractual laboratory technicians, class attendants and office attendants.
SGMCH sources said sanitary workers have to open the offices of various departments daily, while teachers and tutors often perform administrative work.
A senior faculty member said SGMCH’s 12 clinical and eight non-clinical and paraclinical departments are struggling with manpower shortages. Sanctioned posts of medical officers for the casualty department are yet to be filled. Doctors from other departments are therefore being deployed to run the casualty, affecting their regular work and potentially compromising the quality of healthcare services.
SGMCH dean and principal Prof Gita Sahu said the government is aware of the vacancies and appropriate measures are being taken in this regard. She added that necessary steps were taken to submit the compliance report to the NMC by the first week of August.
Sundargarh MLA Jogesh Singh said the SGMCH was supposed to provide quality secondary and tertiary healthcare to people in the tribal-dominated region but had unfortunately been reduced to a referral centre due to government neglect.