Bhubaneswar: Odisha is facing acute shortage of doctors as 60 per cent of the sanctioned posts are lying vacant in government hospitals in the state.
Health and Family Welfare Minister Mukesh Mahaling informed the Assembly that out of 15,774 approved posts of doctors 9,503 are now lying vacant.
At present, as many as 6,271 doctors are working in government hospitals across Odisha. Of them
, 5,003 are permanent doctors while 1,135 have been appointed on contractual basis, he said.
This apart, the state has 19 ad-hoc doctors while 110 doctors have been appointed under the District Mineral Foundation (DMF) and four under corpus fund, the Minister said.
In an effort to tide over the situation, the state government has asked the Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) to fill up as many as 5,248 vacant posts of doctor in the state at the earliest, Mahaling said.
It may be noted that two new government medical colleges and hospitals, one at Phulbani and another at Talcher, were made functional this year. With this, the total number of government medical colleges in Odisha has gone up to 14.
As per information, Odisha has over 1,900 MBBS seats in government medical colleges.