Doctors, nurses, medical technicians and other staff in the Government hospitals as well private hospitals in the coastal districts are coming out into the streets and protesting vehemently for the past two months against the Union Government’s decision to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh and form the state of Telangana with Hyderabad as the common capital for ten years.
Most of the Government hospitals such as King George Hospital in Visakhapatnam are attending to only emergency cases and outpatients. As a result others are facing hardship. Those who can afford private medical care are going to private hospitals. Even doctors and staff in private hospitals are joining the protest demonstrations. It is agreed by one and all among the medical fraternity here that medical education and medicare, especially advanced medicare, will receive a body blow if the State is divided as it will take a long time to recover from it.
Infrastructure
Dr P. Syamsundar, Secretary of Government Doctors’ Association (Andhra region), puts it succinctly, “As far as medical education and advanced medicare are concerned, Hyderabad is the head and the rest of AP the torso. It is a fact and not merely an analogy I am drawing. The advanced medical infrastructure is available only in the Hyderabad hospitals — the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), the Gandhi Hospital or the Osmania Hospital. There is not a single hospital in the coastal districts or Rayalaseema comparable to those hospitals. Then how can we have quality medical education or advanced medicare in these 13 districts if the State is divided?”
About the promise being made by Congress leaders that such facilities would be developed in the residuary Andhra Pradesh also after bifurcation, he retorted, “They are like quacks performing a complicated operation without knowing a thing about it, as one intellectual, Ch. Srinivas, put it. You can have wonderful buildings, the most advanced medical equipment and the rest of paraphernalia. But how long will it take to produce a super-specialist in a particular branch of medicine? The residuary Andhra Pradesh, as they are so callously describing it, has to start from the scratch.”
Therefore, he said, doctors, nurses, medical and other staff in all hospitals were participating in and supporting the agitation for a united Andhra Pradesh. “Our intention is not to cause hardship to the patients, but if we don't speak up now, we will be doing a grave injustice to the society at large and the younger generation in particular.”
Dr. B. Ramamurthy, a senior doctor from Kakinada, expressing similar views, said it would be extremely difficult to attract private investment into the medical sector in the rest of Andhra Pradesh. “For any education quality is of the essence, more so for medical education. We cannot have quality medical education with the primitive facilities we have in Kakinada medical college or Kurnool medical college. I don't see how such facilities can be built up here and I cannot even hazard a guess how long it will take, with the kind of leadership we have at the Central and state levels.”
Dr Raghavendra Rao, President of the Government Doctors' Association, Kakinada, said it was an ill-advised move to bifurcate the State and “it will create a much bigger problem. The proposed remedy is worse than the disease.”