Hyderabad: With the quarrel between Telangana and AP doctors intensifying at government run hospitals, patients are now beginning to feel the heat.
A recent circular issued by the director of health and medical education of AP calling for recruitment of doctors is the reason for this acrimony.
Varalaxmi Ravi S., who was getting her son treated for a fracture at Gandhi hospital said, “There is an undercurrent of tension among doctors.
They speak very little to the patients and this they do in a very curt manner.” She is not the only one to feel so. In the general wards or in the corridors in teaching as well as area hospitals, patients and relatives find themselves discussing the issue.
Mahesh Kumar’s father had been admitted with seizures in the Osmania General hospital. He told this newspaper: “The issues among doctors have become very prominent now.
There is a lot of restlessness among the doctors. The patients are able to gauge that something is wrong.”
The arguments and skirmishes in public between doctors hailing from the two states may be limited but there is restlessness and whenever circulars like the one calling for appointment of AP doctors are issued they become very aggressive.
The TS Government Doctors Association approached principal secretary Subash Chandra and handed a letter requesting that the government intervene and stop the recruitment by the AP government.
Dr R. Raghu, senior doctor says, “We want the AP government to wait till the Kamalnath committee comes out with the guidelines on employees. Till then there must be no recruitments.”
The biggest fear among TS doctors is that the AP doctors will not get transferred to their state beca-use of lack of posts and the promotions of associate professors and other vacancies will be stalled in TS.
A senior officer in the directorate of health department said, “The recruitment is for the vacant posts. Those who get transferred from TS to AP will have to be accommodated by the government by creating additional posts.”
TS doctors claim that there are 800 doctors from AP who will have to go and accommodating such a large number will be an issue.
