JAMMU: What an irony, the hometown and once home constituency in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly of Ghulam Nabi Azad is hugely lacking staff in the Community Health Centre, Bhaderwah. This happens despite Azad being the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha and having been voted in August 2013 as the best Health Minister India ever had since Independence.
If the home town of the high profile and highly acclaimed former Health Minister stands testimony to being unhealthy, what can be the scenario in rest of Jammu and Kashmir, or for that matter, elsewhere in the country?
The staff strength and position as on date has been brazenly put on display in the Community Health Centre, according to which the facility does not have any consultant in medicine discipline despite sanctioned two posts. Both the posts of Gynecologists are vacant while the two posts in the Anesthesiology department are yet to be filled. Similarly, the posts in Radiology, Dentistry and Blood Bank are also vacant due to callousness of the governments that be, notwithstanding tall claims being trumpeted about health for all.
This being the poor health of manpower, the position with regard to availability and supply of medicines remains precarious. Whatsoever medicines are supplied to the health institutions, not only in Bhaderwah but elsewhere in the State, mostly find their way to black-market with poor patients suffering the most. Whatsoever little stock remains available in the hospitals is supplied to influential patients. The left over patients, if at all provided any medicines, get spurious drugs.
An insider in the Community Health Centre informed on the condition of anonymity that never ever has any official or checking team of the Food and Drugs Organisation visited the institution to verify the supplies or take samples of drugs for testing at any credible lab.
The spurious drugs scam of 2013 is still haunting the people, which got hushed up due to vested interests in the Food and Drugs Organisation. Due to wrapping up of the case, the real actors continue to remain in veil, which is why the recurrence of spurious drugs continues to unfold from time to time. On the face of ‘omissions and commissions’, the government’s latest claim of providing life saving drugs to the inpatients in Jammu and Kashmir hospitals does not impress any. The people remain skeptical about the quality of drugs being supplied to the hospitals due to active connivance of unscrupulous elements in the Food and Drugs Organisation with equally unscrupulous drug suppliers.
The poor patients think twice about the efficacy of drugs, if at all provided in the hospitals.