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Doctors' truancy costing dear

People expect them to do their duty
6 October 2010, 18:00 PM
EDITORIAL
The report that a vigilance team from the health ministry found some 170 doctors absent from their duty stations in the public hospitals and health complexes at upazila and union parishad levels is shocking, though not surprising. In fact, the surprise visits by the ministry and directorate level vigilance teams have only served to confirm the earlier reports in the media based on the complaints from the patients in remote areas of the country. Shirking duties by professionals none other than doctors, who belong to the class of the brightest qualifying as medical students and who are bound by Hippocratic oath to serve ailing humanity, verges on the scandalous. It is really beyond comprehension how a doctor can leave behind hundreds of rural patients, who have no other place to go for treatment than the upazila and union parishad level public hospitals. Unfortunately, most of them accounted for highly irregular attendance and yet signing the attendance register to get paid. Some of them did never appear after their appointment to these hospitals and health complexes in July this year. The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS)'s decision to take disciplinary action against the absentee doctors is nothing out of the ordinary, since any government servant if found dodging duty is liable to departmental action including harsher punishment depending on the gravity of the offence under law. Being public servants having the expertise in medical science to treat the ailing people, they are supposed to deliver service according to their job descriptions. What is more, as they are in such a noble profession, society's expectation from them is also very high. The defaulting doctors, therefore, committed a grave offence on two counts. First as a public servant evading duties and second as doctors being irresponsible towards their patients. Punishment is a measure taken after an offence has been committed. However, punishment alone is not enough. But doctors who compromise on their sacred duties need to correct themselves through an honest soul-searching in this respect. . What a huge cost the state or the general tax paying citizens for that matter had to bear to train them as doctors. So, after becoming doctors it is their turn to repay the debt. By thus evading their duties at the public clinics in the countryside, they are doing disservice to the people. While the departmental action against the duty-dodging doctors will remain a routine measure, the main thrust of the government should be to provide the necessary orientations as well as incentives to the doctors stationed at the remotely placed hospitals and health clinics. The rural centres have to be developed with good schools, sports and other entertainment facilities, a process which will be aided by the continuing presence of the doctors.

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