Health Minister Ma. Subramanian’s surprise inspection at Thisayanvilai Upgraded Primary Health Centre (UPHC) on Sunday, following which a memo was issued to a doctor for being absent for duty, has kicked up a storm with government doctors turning to the social media and internal forums to vent as close to 2,000 posts of medical officers are lying vacant in the Directorate of Public Health (DPH) and Preventive Medicine.
An official document from September 2022 acknowledged that filling up of vacancies in the State’s Health Department was a challenge. Then, of the total sanctioned posts of 6,498 medical officers, 1,500 (23%) were vacant. At present, official sources and government doctors confirmed that there were nearly 2,000 vacant posts of medical officers in the directorate.
