AIADMK’s general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami on Tuesday, November 14, 2023, complained of a of shortage of medicines at government hospitals in Tamil Nadu.
In a statement, he said that unlike during the previous regime of the AIADMK when medicines were bought through the Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation (TNMSC), the present practice was to get them through local purchase, as a result of which only half the required quantity was being procured.
Accusing the DMK government of having closed down Amma clinics, an initiative of the AIADMK regime, Mr. Palaniswami said the present regime had, instead, opened merely 700 pharmacies under the project of urban healthcare, leaving people of villages in the lurch for medicines even for minor ailments such as cough and fever.
The DMK government’s Makkalai Thedi Maruthuvam programme (taking healthcare to the people), he said, was launched by merely merging two programmes: pain and palliative care management, and non-communicable diseases, that were implemented during the AIADMK reign.
Also, he pointed out, questions had been raised by doctors about not filling in the vacancy of the post of Director Medical Education since November 1.
The former Chief Minister also referred to reports about the hardships faced by Commissioner of the Greater Chennai Corporation, J. Radhakrishnan, who was earlier T.N. Health Secretary, , in getting medical treatment at the Chennai Corporation hospital and the Rajiv Gandhi Govt. General Hospital for his assistant who was injured a few days ago.
Mr Palaniswami demanded that vacancies in all government hospitals be filled; control rooms in the hospitals function properly; clinics be set up in rural areas too and asked for medicines be supplied in adequate quantities to the hospitals.
Dhinakaran slams condition of State Health Department
Also expressing his concern over the condition of the Health Department, AMMK general secretary, T.T.V. Dhinakaran, referred to reports of the security staff of the Sivaganga Government Hospital attending to a four-year-old boy with burn injuries and the presence of a rat at a restaurant at the Government Stanley Hospital, all of which had generated a sense of insecurity and fear among people, he claimed. He pulled up the DMK government for its “negligence” towards the health sector.
