SHILLONG: In its bid to to address the perpetual shortage of specialist doctors in Meghalaya, the State Government has taken up an initiative to address the shortage by launching “Design and adoption of Alternate models for Responding to address shortage of medical specialists in Meghalaya”(ADARSH).
The provisional signing of the MoU and a workshop was conducted between State Government and Public Health Foundation of India and Indian Institutes of Public Health recently in Shillong
The critical and specialist health workforce is important to achieve health and wider development objectives over the next few decades. Medical specialists are scarce in Meghalaya and the numbers are lower than required in the public sector, at the Community Health Centre (CHC) level and above. Even district hospitals in the state have an acute shortage of medical specialists.
Secretary of the Health Department, Pravin Bakshi said that the ADARSH project was an attempt to design and scale-up alternate models for responding to the critical shortage of medical specialists in the state to train doctors in the public sector.
“The College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPS) model is an alternative model that will be adopted in Meghalaya. PHFI/IIPH will work closely with the Government of India, State Governments, the CPS and other stakeholders to facilitate specialist doctors strengthening in the public sector,” he said.
Under the programme, large District Hospitals (DHs) will be leveraged for specialist doctors training and this is in keeping with the National Health Policy 2017 and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Steering Committee for advocating scaling-up of specialist training options like that of the CPS in district hospital.
The project will increase the number of specialists in the state through adoption of alternate model for responding to the critical shortage of medical specialists at FRUs, CHCs, Sub District Hospitals and District Hospitals for providing patient centred secondary health care services.
According to Bakshi, the participating district hospitals will witness a strengthening of their capital infrastructure as well as the staffing of specialists and it is hoped that the presence of Post-Graduate trainees around the year in a hospital will have a domino effect that may lead to better services and higher utilisation.
It is felt that the State Government will directly benefit from the availability of a larger specialist pool. The population, particularly women and children, served by the District Hospitals will have 24×7 access to medical specialists.
After completion of their training, the states will judiciously choose where these specialists will be posted to address concerns within the state, adding the two-year courses that will eventually be offered will include Diploma in Child Health, Maternal Health, Anaesthesiology and Surgery.