Combating Corona: State govt initiates doctor recruitment drive
Kolkata: Amidst the Corona crisis, the state health department has taken up a doctor recruitment drive to further boost the health infrastructure in various government hospitals.
In the wake of COVID-19 situation the state government is trying to make an adequate arrangement of doctors to meet the requirements which may arise in the future.
The West Bengal Health Recruitment Board (WBHRB) will soon recruit around 2,545 medical officers across the state to increase the existing strength. WBHRB will fill 1371 posts of specialist medical officer while 1174 vacant posts of general duty medical officers would also be filled up.
It may be mentioned here that earlier this year the state health department announced the recruitment of 1,500 medical officers and 9,000 nursing staff in order to mitigate the crisis of nursing staff members and doctors in the state-run hospitals, mostly in the districts. According to sources in the Health department, there are vacant posts for medical officers and nurses at various government health establishments. The health department is eager to mitigate the staff crunch especially in the COVID-19 situation when there is a need for strengthening of staff capacity in various medical colleges and COVID designated hospitals. There are presently more than 11,000 doctors in government hospitals. The number of doctors in state hospitals stood at 4,500 in 2011. The number of nurses has gone up to nearly 53,000. When the Mamata Banerjee government came to power there were around 37,366 nurses in government health establishments.
It may be mentioned here that the state government has recently empowered the Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMoH) in all the districts so that they can recruit doctors, nurses and health workers on contractual basis and also build up necessary infrastructure on the basis of the requirements in the respective districts. The CMoHs in the districts have been given more power to handle the present COVID-19 situation.
