Health Minister's Directives for Bihar

The recently appointed health minister of Bihar, Tej Pratap Yadav, has directed the health department officials to provide round-the-clock emergency ward assistance in all medical college hospitals in the state. The minister has clearly implied that the services of the doctor should be available to patients 24x7, even at the odd hours in all medical college hospitals spread across the state.

Coinciding with the announcement, is another announcement of the minister telling his fellow colleagues that he would be personally making surprise checks to see if the order has been implemented properly; more specifically, he will personally like to ensure that the doctors are on duty all the time and no other loopholes are reported in the functioning of the medical colleges.

He also reiterated the point of making all essential (life-saving) drugs available to the patients, without causing any harassment to the patients.

During a recently conducted meeting with the health officials, Tej Pratap is implied to have told the principal secretary (health) Brajesh Mehrotra to take a similar step, i.e., to mark the 24x7 presence of government doctors in the district hospitals and primary health centres (PHCs); these doctors should reside at their places of posting. The minister also instructed the principal secretary to monitor the government doctors' posting and duty hours and find out if any of them refrains from duty. He instructed the senior doctors to visit their wards twice at night.

Yadav asked Mehrotra to keep the emergency wards of the following hospitals working round-the-clock, as reported by TOI:

• Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH)
• Nalanda Medical College and Hospital (NMCH)
• Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences
• Child ward of PMCH

To make government hospitals well-equipped, Tej Pratap reviewed the availability of CT-Scan, MRI, X-Ray, and Ventilator machines and asked the officials concerned to get all the non-functional machines repaired. He ordered that cleanliness must be maintained in all the hospitals and agents of private hospitals are not able to misguide and lure patients.