Recently, a pregnant woman afflicted with HIV came to the hospital for delivery but was turned back as the hospital had no gynaecologist. The private hospitals on knowing her medical condition declined to attend to the patient.

Even though it is a 250-bed hospital the public are put to great hardship and are deprived of timely treatment due to paucity of doctors. Of the 20 doctor posts granted to the district hospital, only five doctors are working at present.

Posts of gynaecologist, anaesthetist, paediatrician, nephrologist, ENT specialist and others remain vacant. However, now a gynaecologist has been appointed on contract basis. But a lone gynaecologist will not be able to handle all the cases for 24 hours in a day. In addition to this there is also a shortage of  nurses and ‘Group D’ employees.

Of the 55 posts of nurses only 15 are filled and out of the 80 posts of ‘Group D’ employees, 62  posts remain vacant. In total, including the gynaecologist on contract basis and paediatrician and District Surgeon Dr M G Beedimane eight  doctors are serving at the hospital.

Even if one of the doctors is on leave there is a tremendous pressure on the other doctors, as they will have to dabble with too many cases. Even though the hospital has  ultra sound machine and dialysis equipment there aren’t any radiologist and nephrologist to attend to it.

No burns ward yet

The hospital has staff to treat patients with burn cases but strangely the burns ward has not been started yet. The radiologist who was appointed at the district hospital has got himself deputed to the McGan Hospital in Shimoga owing to political influence. Thus, the ultra sound machine is being rendered useless since past three months.

Moreover, due to non-availability of radiologist the patients are referred to private hospitals for X-Ray, MRI, CT  scanning. As per the Nanjundappa report a dialysis equipment was granted to the hospital. But it remains unused as there is no nephrologist.

“The situation at the district hospital can only be improved if the posts of doctors, nurses and ‘Group D’ employees are filled immediately. Until then the condition of patients will continue to remain grim,” observed Dr Beedimane.