In a recruitment drive, the state Health department has created 126 different posts of nursing faculties and 79 posts of non-teaching staff in 13 newly-set up government colleges of nursing.
To ensure the availability of improved healthcare facilities to each corner of the state and to upgrade the academic status of nursing personnel for coping with the modern and rapidly developing medical sciences, the 13 new government colleges of nursing have been set up across the state besides a nursing training school at Calcutta National Medical College.
The state Health department had already initiated the process of recruiting 1,800 general duty medical officers (GDMO) at the Primary Health Centre (PHC) level to further boost up infrastructure in the districts.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee recently instructed the Health department to enhance infrastructure in the rural areas to combat any possible Covid surge in the future.
As part of it, the state government took up a massive recruitment drive to boost the health infrastructure. The Health department had decided to induct around 6,000 vacant posts of health professionals, including GDMO at the district level hospitals.
The Swasthya Bhawan published notification for filling up the vacant posts of GDMO in February 2021.
The list of successful candidates was also published but the process was stuck due to various reasons. Earlier this year, the Health department had received more than 2,492 applications for the post of GDMO. There are around 3,974 posts for general nursing staff and 2,140 for BSC nursing posts.
Earlier, in 2020, the state Health department had announced the recruitment of over 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.
Presently, there are more than 12,000 doctors in government hospitals. In 2011, the number of doctors in government hospitals stood at 4,500. For nurses, the number has gone up to over 53,000 now.