I am writing this letter on behalf of thousands of dental professionals reeling under the psychological trauma. Reason, after having undergone regressive professional training of 4 ½ years ,year of internship along with junior and senior residency experiences are unable to offer their professional services to the state. Unemployed, in a nutshell. Dental surgeons are facing the toughest time as could be imagined.
Just before couple of years, it was very heartening to see dental professionals being part of the hospitals rendering their services and working with other allied fields of medicine to make a healthy society but last few years have been bad for the profession.
Sir, amidst all this, our state health ministry, and health directorates would always talk about the need for dental surgeons at the primary health centres, sub district and district levels and their needful induction in various health schemes for building up a healthier system. Add to it the shortage created in absence of the dental surgeons.
On record, the appeal under RTI filed about the sanctioned number of posts of dental surgeons in our state, the PIO couldn’t clarify the posts of dental surgeons either in plan or non plan, nor any sanctioned govt. copy has been provided.About govt. order no 604 HME OF 2007, and 235 HME 2010, 143 posts of dental surgeons have been created under plan head. Also information about the strength of dental surgeons posts in NRHM, could not be furnished as their hardly has been a ground level appointments in our case for the same.
Further as per dci recommendations, dental HPSA’s Health Professional Shortage Areas are based on a dentist to population ratio of 1:5,000. In other words, when there are 5,000 or more people per dentist, an area is eligible to be designated as a dental HPSA. Applying this formula, it would take approximately additional 2 to 4 thousand dentists to deal with the current dental HPSA designations in our state.
All these statistics pose a grim and gloomy picture about the future of now thousands of unemployed dental professionals, searching for their livelihood.
Sir, let me begin by highlighting some core issues, facing the dental profession in general:
• For past ten years, there has been no post of employment advertised by any recruiting agency of the state. It was back in 2007, when their was realignment and rationalization in our health care system that led to induction of dental surgeons in various hospitals but since then it has been all blank.
• Dentistry has been befuddled by quackery and its implications have been quite evident with the epidemics of blood borne diseases like Hep B, C in Districts of Anantnag and, Pulwama.
• Every year 200 students complete their degree from two Government Dental Colleges, one private college of the state and in addition many others pass out from various private colleges outside state, and the number is increasing.
In addition to that, it has been compounded by poor state response
• meager GDP spent on our health sector,
• Unorganized health care facilities and services
• poor workplace planning and allocation of professionals at grass root levels.
Intensive oral health care needed.
1. Oral health care is needed for every individual. The need essentially lies in launching the intensive oral health care in our state. It should be imperative to take the oral health to far-flung areas of each district/tehsil.
2. Include the dental surgeons under NHRM and RMSY schemes for taking oral health to needful and the poor who can afford the cost of expensive private dentistry.
3. To monitor and implement all the dental programmes it is proposed to establish a post of District Dental Health Officer for all the districts of the State.
4. Stop quackery in dentistry that has been core issue and only reason behind the spread of blood borne diseases.
All these steps and much more can not only help to curb the unemployment but are sufficient enough to help build a strong oral health status of our state.
The incentives and policies will go a long way in lifting the morale of thousands of unemployed doctors who want to work for their state.
t.a.tahir66@gmail.com