State to install CCTVs at about 25 locations in each med college
KOLKATA: In a bid to strengthen the security measures in various medical colleges across Bengal, the state Health department is going to install CCTVs at 25 locations in each medical college.
The National Medical Commission (NMC) has also issued an advisory to all the state governments urging it to ensure CCTVs at various strategic locations, including the main entrance of the medical college, patients name registration counter, outdoors and also at the places where teacher doctors register their daily attendance.
The NMC also recommended installation of CCTVs at the outdoor departments of medicine, orthopedic, gynecology and obstetrics department. There must be CCTVs at faculty lounges of all the departments, lecture theaters, dissection hall of medical students, physiology and biochemistry laboratory, pharmacology laboratory, patients' waiting rooms and emergency casualty wards.
A senior Health department official said that there was already an adequate number of CCTVs at all the medical colleges. The instruction of the NMC was nothing new, he added. "We have already been implementing the recommendations made by it," he said. The NMC had recommended adequate CCTVs at all the government and private medical colleges.
It may be mentioned here that the NMC was trying to monitor the daily activities of all the medical colleges.
A section of doctors in the city has, however, opposed the move of the NMC by saying that it's a direct intervention on the daily affairs of the medical colleges. A senior Health official in the state said that the move would keep a tab on those, who are irregular in offices. A top Health official had earlier said that a new system would be placed to ensure that the doctors at the medical colleges devote minimum time at the hospitals.
The state Health department has already taken a strong position on transfer of patients in various government medical colleges. No government hospital can transfer a patient unless it is a genuine need, the Health department issued strict guidelines.
The department also decided to prepare a roster making it mandatory for all government doctors to devote at least 40 hours in a week in their workplaces. The move aims at streamlining health services in government hospitals and also to fix accountability of doctors on government service.
