GUWAHATI, Dec 9 - The State Government has adopted a medicine policy for streamlining medicine supplies in government-run hospitals. As per the policy, 165 drugs have been enlisted as essential.
State Health Minister Dr Nazrul Islam said this while replying to a debate on the voting for supplementary demand for grants in the Assembly today.
Dr Islam admitted that low salary was a hindrance for doctors to serve in the government-run health sector in the State. �It is an unpleasant truth. But I hope the Seventh Pay Commission will address this concern,� he said.���
Earlier, a number of Opposition members, including Bhupen Roy (AGP), Mujibur Rahman (AIUDF), Kamal Singh Narzary (BPF), Mukunda Ram Choudhury (AGP) and Sheikh Shah Alam (AIUDF) criticized the Government over the �unimpressive health-care scenario�, pointing out a number of problem areas such as doctor and paramedic shortage, medicine shortage as well as wasteful expenditure over medicine, spurious medicine in rural areas, high rate of MMR and IMR, escalating price of life-saving medicines, poor doctor-patient ratio, etc.
Dr Islam said that there was no shortage of medicine in the hospitals now.
Claiming that the State�s health-care sector had taken positives strides in the past 15 years under the Congress Government, Dr Islam said that problems compounded for the health sector due to the prolonged stagnation in medical education expansion for almost four decades. �We do have shortage of doctors. That�s because there was a long gap of four decades in medical education expansion. We had just three medical colleges for a long time. It is only recently that we have six medical colleges. However, we will have 10 medical colleges soon,� he said.
