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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Docs protest rural practice bill

Docs protest rural practice bill

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published Published on Dec 18, 2009   modified Modified on Dec 18, 2009

The government’s bill to create a three-year diploma course to train “rural health practitioners” triggered protests from doctors today, who questioned the validity of such a diploma and threatened a statewide agitation.

The West Bengal Health Regulatory Authority Bill will permit rural health practitioners with the three-year diplomas to treat patients in villages where qualified doctors don’t want to go.

The health practitioners will not be called doctors, health minister Surjya Kanta Mishra said yesterday.

But the Indian Medical Association (IMA) and the Association of Health Service Doctors, two leading organisations of doctors, criticised the bill, saying that it would worsen the condition of an already crippled rural health system. An IMA source said a ceasework call was one of the options being considered as a way to protest.

“There cannot be any short course for medical studies,” said Satyajit Chakraborty, secretary of the Association of Health Service Doctors. “There is no point in putting MBBS qualified doctors in villages where there is no infrastructure. The government should train paramedic personnel instead of offering shorter medical courses,” he said.

“We also demand that such doctors should not get the authority to issue death and illness certificates,” he said.

Doctors on rural duty are generally posted in primary health centres — each meant for at least 10 villages that could have a population of 30,000 to 40,000.

“We don’t recognise any medical degree or diploma below MBBS, which is recognised by the Medical Council of India and the World Health Organisation,” said Sanjay Banerjee, a senior office bearer of the IMA’s Bengal branch.

“We had expressed our reservations to the government before the bill was brought to the Assembly and we sought changes,” he said.

The doctors pointed to loopholes in the bill. “It says the practitioners would be able to treat only select illnesses. Then what about critical care?” asked Sudipto Roy, Trinamul Congress MLA and working committee member of IMA.

He said the government should go for campus recruitment in medical colleges and choose doctors. “Every year 1,100 doctors pass out from medical colleges in the state but most of them don’t get a job here. They have to go out of the state to seek jobs. Many of them will be glad to work in the rural hospitals and health centres,” said Roy.

Whether the government will try any course correction is yet to be seen, but the doctors’ protest today made the chief minister’s convoy change its route. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, returning home for lunch, took the N.S. Road instead of BBD Bag East when he was leaving at 1.20pm because of the protest by the IMA near the east gate of the Writers’.

Bloc ire

The Forward Bloc today accused the CPM of imposing a “one-party rule”, citing the passage of the rural health bill in the Assembly.


The Telegraph, 18 December, 2009, http://telegraphindia.com/1091218/jsp/bengal/story_11880892.jsp
 

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