JOIN USTwo days after the district magistrate (DM) of Kaimur issued a diktat to the civil surgeon to display the names and photographs of five best and five worst doctors, the members of Bihar State Health Service Association (BSHSA) are up in arms over the offending order and have asked the DM not to treat doctors like criminals or dacoits.
District Magistrate Jai Singh, while reviewing the functioning of health centres and sub-centres in all 11 blocks of Kaimur district in western Bihar, asked the Civil Surgeon Dr R B Singh to identify five best and five worst doctors in his area on the basis of their performance in outdoor patients department, and display their names along with their photographs at all important public places.
Taking umbrage at the move, doctors throughout the State have expressed their utter shock and dismay over the district magistrate’s action. “Till now, the photographs of thieves, dacoits and criminals were pasted at public places. Since when the doctors too have been put in the same bracket?,” wondered Dr Ajay Kumar, general secretary of the BSHSA.
Dr Ajay, along with the BSHSA executive president Dr Akhilesh Kumar Sinha, treasurer Dr Ranjeet Kumar and president of Bihar Medical Teachers’ Association Dr Arvind Kumar Sinha, has shot off a joint protest letter to the Kaimur DM. The senior doctors have reminded the district magistrate that as per the rules of Medical Council of India, no photograph or poster of any doctor can be put up at public places. “We hope the district magistrate will realise his folly and withdraw his order which is quite humiliating, undignified and unjustified,” said Dr Ajay.
Meanwhile, even as the doctors and bureaucrat continue to be at loggerheads, the Kaimur DM, while presiding over the meet of the district health society, has asked the civil surgeon to prepare a list of government doctors doing private practice at various nursing homes in his jurisdiction.