Sunday, April 1, 2018

City craze ails TN docs, leaves smaller towns ill 

While Chennai Has 18 Doctors For 10,000 People, There Are 2 In Tiruvarur; More Medicos From Districts May Help, Say Experts

Pushpa.Narayan@timesgroup.com 31.03.2018

The wait at a doctor’s clinic is usually long, and the queue could be longer if you live outside the city. A recent study by the health department shows that Tamil Nadu isn’t just dealing with a shortage of doctors, an uneven distribution of doctors is letting patients down.

The state medical council register shows an average of eight doctors for every 10,000 people in the state, a little higher than the national average of six. Worse, districts like Chennai have more than 18 doctors per 10,000, but some like Tiruvarur have just two.

Along with Chennai, Tiruvallur (12.4), Namakkal

(11.1) and Kanyakumari (10.2) meet the WHO recommendation of at least 10 doctors per 10,000 people. But at the other end of the scale, districts like Nagapattinam (3) and Tiruvannamalai (2.9) are far below the national average. “The ratio is based on registrations that happened in the past 30 years. There could be slight variations but it is the best indicator we have at present,” said TN State Medical Council president Dr K Senthil.

The poor doctor-patient ratio pulls down health indices such as maternal and child mortality and nutritional status, and leads to under diagnosis of chronic ailments. It also leads to the proliferation of quacks, a large number of whom the directorate of medical services has tracked down in districts like Tiruvannamalai. As there aren’t enough doctors, vacancies in government hospitals and clinics in these districts are proportionately higher.

The absence of data on the total number of hospitals, beds or specialists in each district, makes it more difficult to find a solution for the unequal distribution. In an attempt to find a remedy, Tamil Nadu assembly passed the Clinical Establishment Act last week. “The act will help collate details on facilities available in the private and public sector,” said state health minister C Vijaya Baskar. While the rules of the act are expected to be notified soon, the act will make it mandatory for all clinical establishments to register with the government and provide details about the number of beds, details of equipment and staff.

Last month, a six-member committee, headed by the Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation managing director P Umanath, declared at least 16 of the 32 districts in TN to be backward in terms of health due to inadequate doctor-patient ratio and poor health indices. While it said government doctors in remote areas should be given incentives, it had indicated the need for policy changes that would encourage students from these districts to take up medicine.



LONG WAIT: Vacancies of doctors in GHs in some districts are higher

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