Healthcare challenges in Post COVID-19 scenario

The government’s limited attention on health care facilities in Jammu & Kashmir won’t not only attract huge public criticism in the post COVID-19 scenario but questions would also be raised by health specialists on institutional and infrastructural failures of the health and medical education department. Had health care been a vote-catching subject, the successive regimes would have given it the attention more than it deserves. The poor patient care even at the main referral hospitals in twin capital cities Srinagar and Jammu show the mirror to the government particularly the bureaucratic top brass of health and medical education department. The patient care even at the main referral hospitals in Srinagar and Jammu is poor and fragmented. Unfortunately the government had to use hotels as quarantine centers due to insufficient intake capacity at the main referral hospitals in Srinagar and district hospitals in the major towns of Kashmir valley. As hotels are not suitable places for keeping the immigrants under surveillance, better surveillance of the immigrants at the hospitals would have surely reduced the intensity of the spread of this deadly disease in Kashmir valley. Main referral hospitals having no extra capacity to deal with the heavy rush of patients in the wake of extensive medical emergency shows that the government has never thought of building even the additional blocks in the hospitals for use in the extensive emergency situations. Natural calamities have no calendar and for facing the unscheduled emergencies triggered by the natural calamities the government has to keep its both institutional and as well infrastructural health care setup in a state of readiness. The biggest failure of the government in the health care sector is the dearth of manpower facilities at the main referral hospitals and district healthcare facility centre in major town across Kashmir. Shockingly the unprecedented delay in filling the already created posts in health sector has largely contributed to the dearth of technical staff in the hospitals.
Deferments and phase wise plans for expanding the institutional and infrastructural facilities won’t work in the post COVID-19 scenario and government will have to show no laxity in spending huge funds on upgradaton of health care facilities on priority across Jammu & Kashmir.
How could the manpower recruitment process be fast tracked when the incumbent central government has unnecessarily terminated the services of J&K Public Service Commission (J&K PSC) the recruiting body for doctors just to satisfy it’s political ego. Fortunately the doctors are managing and arranging the infrastructural and institutional facilities in the continuing fight against COVID-19 pandemic but in the post COVID-19 pandemic scenario the government will have change its priorities for expanding the institutional and infrastructural health care facilities across Jammu & Kashmir. Deferments and phase wise plans for expanding the institutional and infrastructural facilities won’t work in the post COVID-19 scenario and government will have to show no laxity in spending huge funds on upgradaton of health care facilities on priority across Jammu & Kashmir.