Bihar: 18 doctors to be appointed on contract in West Champaran

BETTIAH: The rising Covid death toll and spike in positive cases has awoken West Champaran to the shortage of doctors and paramedics in battling the pandemic. “We are issuing advertisements to recruit 18 doctors, 18 paramedics/auxiliary nurse midwives and 10 lab technicians,” civil surgeon Arun K Sinha told this newspaper on Wednesday.
The fresh recruitment would be on contract at fixed salaries of Rs65,000 for doctors, Rs12000 for lab technicians and Rs11,500 for paramedics/ANMs, he said.
On Wednesday, a 17-year-old boy from Motihari and a 50-year-old from Bagaha, both positive for coronavirus, died at the Government Medical College here, thereby taking the toll to 14. The toll include the patient from Motihari and another woman from Sitamarhi, who succumbed last week.
Meanwhile, the civil surgeon claimed that testing has been ramped up. “About 40 tests are being done everyday across the 19 PHCs and the medical college,” he said even as the number of cases mounted to 1,247 with 97 fresh detections on Tuesday evening.
Meanwhile, apart from efforts to add another floor at the medical college for Covid patients, a 100-bed facility is being set up at Narkatiaganj. “The Bagaha sub-divisional hospital being under floodwaters, we are setting up the Covid facility at the indoor stadium there,” Sinha said.
“We have further expanded our services by giving medical kits to patients in home isolation. Each kit includes 10 tablets of Arithromycin 500mg, 20 vitamin C and 10 B-Complex vitamin capsules. The kit also has a note advising on intake of medicines plus a pamphlet with Dos and Don’ts with advice on Ayurvedic support on its reverse,” he said, adding that tele-counselling has become functional from a ‘Dedicated Command & Control Room’. “An MBBS doctor and an Ayush doctor are manning this 24X7 in 8-hourly shifts,” he said. “To bolster telemedicine advice, we’ve also set up a call centre with WhatsApp calling facilities,” the civil surgeon added.