Civil surgeon diktat to doctors; meet your daily sampling target or face action
Kanwar Inder Singh/ royalpatiala.in/ Chandigarh
Civil surgeon Patiala Dr Harish Malhotra has issue an official letter to all the senior medical officers (SMO’s), incharge community health centres ( CHC) , primary health centres (PHC’s) to meet their daily covid sampling targets, at any cost.
As per the letter issued by civil surgeon Patiala, he has asked the SMO’s, incharge CHC’s, PHC’s in the district to find out the ways at their own level to how to achieve their daily sampling targets. He has further asked them to take necessary action against the doctor who fail to perform or avoid performing their duty and inform him within 24 hours. Civil surgeon has further advised the doctor to meet their covid sampling targets on daily basis, otherwise the department will take action under epidemic diseases and disaster management act and their department will also be informed”.
As per the available information rural medical officers (RMO’s), ayurvedic medical officers (AMO’s), veterinary medical officers (VMO’s) along with other doctors were rope in to speed up the covid sampling. But as per available information, all veterinary medical officers in the district have not made them available for covid sampling duty
The state government has asked the civil surgeons to speed up the testing and to cover all the residents of containment zones, contact tracing, villages, employees of dhabas, factory workers, sweet shops etc. so to curtail the new cases in time.
When contacted a doctor, who is on Covid sampling duty in Patiala district, on the condition of anonymity said “Patiala has around 3000 + daily covid sampling target . The civil surgeon the pressuring the doctors to meet the daily sampling target. Whereas he is not asking the specialist doctors directly posted in the CHC’s or PHC’s to perform the sampling, so that the targets can be met. He is pressurizing other doctors only.”
The doctor further said” as the villagers, residents are protesting and are not coming forward for Covid sampling, these specialist doctors can be made incharge of sampling teams, as they can influence the villagers, residents to have a covid test, as they have an impact on villagers, residents and we will do the sampling.”
The doctor further informed that the authorities never ask the VIP category of doctors to do sampling. Elaborating further on VIP category, the doctor said” those with political, bureaucrat, with influential background fall in VIP category. They were not assigned any field duty or if assigned , they were made supervisor or nodal officers, but not assigned any sampling duty.”
The doctor further added that “with the regular exposure of PPE kit, the sampling staff is reporting dehydration and other problems.”
September,5,2020
