Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik Friday underlined ‘‘infant mortality and control of non-communicable and communicable diseases’’ as major challenges to his government.
“State government has been making efforts to ensure people’s access to equitable, affordable and quality health services,” Patnaik said addressing a training programme of newly recruited doctors here, adding, “Our major challenges in health sector are reduction of infant mortality and control of communicable and non-communicable diseases.”
The Nagada malnutrition deaths in which 19 newborns died due to undernourishment recently or the outbreak of Japanese Encephalitis (JE) which claimed at least 40 children in Malkangiri and one in Bramhagiri and the deaths of children have remained a challenge for the state government.
However, the Chief Minister said “health-care is the priority of the state government which has taken initiatives for effective health services which include implementation of ‘Niramaya’ – the free drug distribution scheme – last year.” Speaking about vacancies of doctors in health institutions in the state, Patnaik said there is 22 per cent vacancies of doctors in the state. “As compared to previous year, vacancies in KBK and KBK-plus districts have come down by 13 per cent,” he said.
Patnaik said the state government has created 500 posts of doctors recently and steps are being taken to recruit 800 additional doctors shortly.
He said the state government has taken introduced incentives to attract doctors to work in government health establishments, particularly in remote areas.
“The major reforms are place-based incentives, counselling for transfer and posting, transparent exit policy, Corpus Fund among others which has started yielding results,” he said.
Further, he said his government has taken measures to set up seven government medical colleges at Baripada, Balasore, Puri, Bolangir, Koraput, Keonjhar and Kalahandi. “PSUs like MCL and NTPC are setting up medical colleges at Talcher and Sundargarh respectively,” he said.
Meanwhile, Patnaik congratulated the 363 doctor recruits and urged them to contribute optimally towards providing quality health services to people. He asked them to promote ‘Niramaya’ scheme to achieve its objectives.
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