Health Minister Ma. Subramanian’s surprise inspection at Thisayanvilai Upgraded Primary Health Centre (UPHC) on Sunday, following which a memo was issued to a doctor for being absent for duty, has kicked up a storm with government doctors turning to the social media and internal forums to vent as close to 2,000 posts of medical officers are lying vacant in the Directorate of Public Health (DPH) and Preventive Medicine.
An official document from September 2022 acknowledged that filling up of vacancies in the State’s Health Department was a challenge. Then, of the total sanctioned posts of 6,498 medical officers, 1,500 (23%) were vacant. At present, official sources and government doctors confirmed that there were nearly 2,000 vacant posts of medical officers in the directorate.
A section of doctors said they had started to raise the issue when the number was nearly 1,500, but it has increased now.
Several doctors are questioning the rationale behind the Minister’s action without assessing the ground reality. As the Tamil Nadu Medical Officers Association (TNMOA) and many doctors stated, of the five posts of medical officers at Thisayanvilai UPHC, four were vacant (including that of a doctor, who is on maternity leave). Only the Block Medical Officer was in place. The doctor who was on-call was attached to Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram, the school health screening team. The situation at Thisayanvilai is not an isolated case.
A medical officer said that in some health unit districts, around 50% of the posts were vacant. This is the case in Nagapattinam, Tiruvarur, Ramanathapuram and Paramakudi, among other places. “In one particular block, there are nine PHCs but only five medical officers. Doctors have been hopping from one PHC to another to take up duty on a rotation basis. There are unwritten deputations. How can the doctors be blamed for administrative failure? Public health and preventive medicine is the backbone of Tamil Nadu’s healthcare, but it has been functioning with so many vacancies,” he said.
“The directorate is functioning short of 2,000 persons....The situation is being managed through deputations. These vacant posts have to be filled up,” an official source said.
The notification to fill up 1,021 posts of assistant surgeons through the Medical Services Recruitment Board (MRB) is pending due to reasons, including court cases. M. Akilan, secretary of TNMOA, said MRB should conduct examinations on time to post MBBS doctors to PHCs. “Trying to fill the vacancies through non-service post graduates and not holding the MRB exam is not appropriate. In addition, new posts should be created. The importance that is given to infrastructure should be given to manpower too,” he said.
“We understand this is a challenge, and we are making sincere efforts to fill up the vacant posts at the earliest,” a health official said.
