Dispensaries reel under staff shortage

World Homoeopathy Day is celebrated every year on April 10 to mark the Birthday of Dr Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy. While the Punjab government is holding a state-level function to celebrate the day in Chandigarh on April 9, the ground reality of the Homeopathy Department in the state depicts a sorry state of affairs.

Rather than holding the function, the government should have held interviews to fill the vacancies as the department is going through severe staff crunch and is in dire straits.

The state has 217 homoeopathic dispensaries since 1976. Of these, 110 are under the state government, while the remaining function under the National Health Mission (NHM).

There are 23 post of District Homoeopathic Officers in the state-run dispensaries, but only four have been filled and one DHO is looking after five to six districts. Of the total 88 post of Homeopathic Medical Officers, 47 are lying vacant. There are 110 post of Homoeopathic Dispensers, of which 76 are lying vacant.

As compared to the state government’s dispensaries, the situation is better at the facilities being run under the National Health Mission. Only 12 out of 99 post of Homoeopathic Medical Officers in the dispensaries being run under NHM are vacant. A total of 107 post of dispensers are there, of which 21 are vacant.

DHO Dr Gurdarshan Kaur in Ludhiana is looking after five districts due to the staff crunch and the situation is the same in other districts as well.

The Homeopathic Medical Officers Association, Punjab, has been regularly writing to the government for filling the vacant posts, but to no avail. “Doctors at the dispensaries are not only seeing the patients, but also doing registration of patients, preparing medicine and dispensing the same to the patients. The doctors are paying from their own pockets to get the dispensaries cleaned up in the absence of class IV employees,” the association members had said in a recent representation submitted by the association to the government.

Eight homoeopathic dispensaries in the district have been upgraded to AYUSH Health and Wellness Centres, which have only added to the workload as the entire work is done online in these dispensaries. “The doctors have to do the patient registration online, link the health record of the patient, prepare an excel sheet and make entry of every patient coming to the dispensary. No separate staff has been provided for doing the online work and the doctor are doing it themselves, along with their other duties. Many times, the server is down or internet does not work, especially in villages. The entire day goes doing the online work. Data Entry Operators should be appointed to handle this work,” said a Homoeopathic Medical Officer.

Dr Harinder Pal Singh, Director, Homoeopathy Department, said there was an acute shortage of staff in the department. Several reminders have been sent to the government, but to no avail.

Punjab