Hyderabad: Telangana is suffering from a severe shortage of pregnancy testing kits, anti-rabies injections and anti-snake venom in public health centers.
Senior government doctors in the PHCs have been constantly writing to the Telangana medical and health infrastructure department for the same.
Patients have to buy these products from the open market as they are not available at the PHCs and most snakebite cases are referred to private hospitals for treatment.
A government doctor said, “When hospitals don’t have medicines, people tend to argue and fight. They are not ready to listen that there is no stock. Due to this our options are limited.”
The shortage of drugs at primary health centres is so alarming that doctors at some Adilabad health centres are administering TT injections to patients bitten by stray dogs, instead of the anti-rabies injections.
The district is facing shortages of cough syrups as well, and officials have been prescribing tablets even for children. Some medical centres are even falling short of sanitisers.
In Karimnagar, officials at the central store, which supplies drugs to hospitals, says the budget to purchase drugs has not been increased in about five years. Given the increasing number of patients, there is a shortage of medicines.
