The healthcare sector in Jammu and Kashmir may be considered as one among the best available in North India but the ground reality is entirely different. Patients still gasp for outside interference in order to ensure that they are allotted a ventilator or some space in critical ICUs. There are innumerable instances wherein attendants beg before doctors to see their patients in emergencies in almost all the associated hospitals both in Jammu as well as in Kashmir division.
We have instances wherein attendants crave for political interference for ensuring that they are provided with ambulances to ferry their dead to their respective places for in time funerals.
This is a stark reality and we should not shy away from accepting these facts. The government of the day should focus on augmentation of healthcare facilities in all the districts apart from strengthening the same along the Srinagar-Jammu national highway. This has become imperative because most of the cases of freak accidents have resulted in fatalities only because the injured are not able to reach the trauma hospitals in time.
The Government of India has also been liberal in its funding for the upliftment of health infrastructure in all the districts of Jammu and Kashmir. This is evident from the facts that work on a number of AIIMS is underway in many districts of Jammu and Kashmir besides multicore projects on super specialities is underway in tertiary care hospitals in both the capitals of J&K.
It is not only an official but moral obligation of doctors and the para medical staff to give their best to treat the patients at peripheral hospitals so as to avoid their unnecessary referrals which ultimately becomes a burden on the tertiary hospitals thereby affecting the critical care in J&K.
People should also cooperate in optimal utilisation of services being provided to them at sub district and districts levels and should refrain from insisting the doctors for avoidable referrals to tertiary care hospitals.
