The CAG in its report has blamed the health department and the state for not doing enough to fulfil vacancies of doctors and paramedical staff in rural areas.
The report said that shortage of doctors in some rural areas was a whopping 75%.
It should be noted that as per the expert group for universal health set up by the planning commission the doctor-population ratio of the country should ideally be 1:1000. Against this Gujarat has a ratio of 1: 2092 which is even lower than the nation ration of 1: 1613.
It found that the shortage of doctors was in the range of 32% to 45% in the state. In the eight districts that the CAG took into consideration, the shortage ranged from 3% to 75%.
The shortage was mainly in tribal district of Dahod (75%), Chhotaudepur (61%) Dang (58%) and Valsad (44%) . In Dahod and Chhotaudepur, one doctor catered to a population of 45,010 and 31,231.
The shortage of paramedical staff was 23% in the test checked districts and 18% in the state.
The CAG in its report did not buy the government's argument that it had carried out open interviews for medical officers on a regular basis but was unable to fill the vacancies as doctors were unwilling to work in rural and tribal areas. The CAG in its report pointed out that the department had failed to utilize the services of MBBS and Postgraduate medical students in Primary Health Centres (PHCs) as they had to render a minimum service of two years in rural areas in partial fulfilment of the degrees. It found that only 537 students of the 2,334 students required to render service in rural areas had joined the service. It also pointed out that the department had not bothered to appoint doctors on contractual basis under the CM Setu programme and this had resulted in deprival of quality health care to the rural population.
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It found that the shortage of doctors was in the range of 32% to 45% in the state. In the eight districts that the CAG took into consideration, the shortage ranged from 3% to 75%.
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