Ponda hospital without physician for five months

PONDA: The Ponda sub-district hospital has been virtually saving lives of heart patients via consultation on WhatsApp as the health department has failed to appoint a physician since January.
The facility, which caters to around 12,000 patients per month, was upgraded to a sub-district hospital on December 19, 2012, when it was shifted to a 220-bed fully furnished building.The upgrade was aimed at offering better secondary care facilities to people in the Ponda taluka and surrounding areas, but the hospital lacked several necessities, including medical and paramedic staff.
However, while the required number of staff were eventually appointed, the post of physician fell vacant at the start of this year. The hospital now has 12 consultants and 12 medical officers excluding the homeopathy and ayurvedic consultants and other paramedics.
On getting a patient with a history of heart ailment or symptoms related to it, consultants or medical officers at the hospital send an electrocardiograph (ECG) of the patient on WhatsApp to Dr Eddy D’Mello, an expert at Hospicio, Margao, almost 17km away from the sub-district hospital. The Ponda hospital consultants then treat the patient according to the telephonic advice received.
Official records of the hospital state that although around 13,000 to 17,000 medical tests, 600 X-rays and 600 ultrasounds are being conducted at the hospital every month, it has no facility to conduct thyroid tests. For these, the hospital has to send blood samples to the Goa Medical College and Hospital (GMC), in Bambolim.
Medical superintendent at the Ponda sub-district hospital, Dr Vikas Kuwelkar, said that the health department has temporarily appointed physician Dr Sujata Prabhugaonkar from the Chicalim Cottage Hospital to the Ponda sub-district hospital. “She is presently on leave and will join the hospital in June. As she has to attend to patients of the cottage hospital as well, she would be available for three days a week at the Ponda hospital,” Kuwelkar said.