Karnataka to appoint 4,000 doctors to strengthen its medical teams to offset looming shortage

Bengaluru, July 10, 2021:

To strengthen its medical teams, the Karnataka government has now embarked on a major recruitment drive to appoint 4,000 doctors. Of these 2,050 will serve as medical officers in the directorate of health & family welfare and medical education departments where the shortfall existed.

The new hiring will be over and above the direct recruitment completed by the state where it appointed 1,750 doctors during the thick and nick of the second wave of the Covid-19 in early June. This now takes the total number of doctors hired to 5,750.

Compulsory rural area service for MBBS doctors have also been implemented and 2,053 doctors are appointed to various vacant positions in the departments of health and family welfare and medical education.

In this regard, 1,001 medicos have been appointed on contractual basis at 18 government medical college hospitals and 666 doctors will be working at the ICUs of the taluk hospitals. This newly appointed medical workforce will be reporting to their respective work places by this month end, said Karnataka health & medical education minister Dr K Sudhakar.

In addition to the direct state recruitment, the government 348 doctors are appointed under National Health Mission. Out of which 90 doctors have been posted in community health centres and three are working in the area of nephro-urology.

“We had a total of 2,108 posts that were vacant and 2,053 posts have been filled up which included the recently held direct recruitment of 4,000 doctors,” said Dr. Sudhakar who added that this hiring was a historic move by the government to ensure no patients suffered because of lack of medical attention with doctor shortage at government hospitals during the pandemic or otherwise.

The state government medical centres were battered with the increasing patient inflow during the second wave along with the rise in the mucormycosis or black fungus cases which is seen to abate. There has been some relief in the last few days as the state is reporting 95% recovery from Covid-19 and even 11 out of the 30 districts in Karnataka are accounting for zero fatalities. Positivity rate is at 2.62%. Only Kodagu, Mysuru, Dakshina Kannada and Hassan districts have positivity rate more than 5%. Karnataka is in third place in testing after Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. We have conducted 3,36,73,395 tests so far. The state is able to conduct 1.5 – 1.75 lakh tests only a daily basis, said the health and medical education minister.

Experts are of the opinion that the 2DG drug developed by DRDO and manufactured by Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories is safe to use.  Hence government is planning to procure this medicine before the third wave, he said. PharmaBiz