Odisha To Recruit 5000 More Doctors, Increase Bed Strength By 21342 To Meet IPHS Norms

Bhubaneswar: Around 5,000 doctors will be appointed by the Odisha government in the coming days and the recruitment would be done in two phases, Health Minister Niranjan Pujari told the Assembly on Monday.

While addressing concerns of Rairangpur MLA Naba Charan Majhi about mere six doctors against 37 posts at Rairangpur sub-divisional hospital, he said that doctors will be appointed in the hospital on priority basis.

Notably, this year the allocation to public healthcare saw an increase of around 27 per cent over the previous year, which was around 7% of the state budget. To ensure all public health facilities have the required number of doctors and paramedics, the government has proposed an additional provision of Rs 229 crore under administrative expenses for recruitment of 5,000 more doctors and 9,000 nurses and paramedical officers in the next fiscal.

The Health Minister, in his reply to another question by MLA Mohan Majhi, said that a decision has been taken to increase the number of beds in government healthcare facilities of the state by 21,342 in the next financial year. “While Union Health Ministry’s Indian Public Health Standard (IPHS) 2022 norms recommend at least one bed per 1,000 population in every district as an ‘essential’ norm, the figure in Odisha stands at 0.71. I have given in written that about 21,342 beds will be added to meet the norms. We currently have  25,000 beds, which was increased from 17,000,” he added.

In October last year, the government had given its in-principle approval to establish 12 more sub-divisional hospitals (SDHs) of 100 beds each, 20 community health centres (CHCs) of 30 beds each and 306 primary health centres (PHCs) of six beds each. Besides, bed strength in all the existing 32 SDHs were to be increased to 100 beds each. The current strength varies between 30 and 60 beds.

It is pertinent to mention here that Niranjan, who is serving as state Finance Minister, was allotted the health portfolio following the death of Naba Kishore Das on January 29.