Punjab govt slammed for removing MBBS doctors from village health centres amid pandemic

Chandigarh: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) senior leader and Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Punjab Assembly, Harpal Singh Cheema said that during the Covid-19 pandemic, the removal of the MBBS doctors serving in the villages by the Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government of the state was reprehensible and the AAP strongly condemns it.

Cheema said that at a time when Covid pandemic was spreading in the villages of Punjab, it was a wrong decision of the government to remove the MBBS doctors from the villages. In a statement issued from the party headquarters here on Wednesday, Harpal Singh Cheema said that Captain Amarinder Singh's government had transferred about 489 subsidiary health centers in rural Punjab under the Rural Development and Panchayat Department to the Health Department.

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Taking a dig at Captain Amarinder Singh, Cheema alleged that the Captain government had also issued orders to shift the subsidiary health centers of the villages and also to remove the MBBS doctors serving in these centers from the villages, which will deprive the people of about 3,000 villages from the medical services.

He said that by removing the MBBS doctors from the villages during the Covid pandemic, the Captain government had betrayed the people of the villages. "The Captain government should also think about where the patients suffering from various ailments will go for treatment in the villages," he added.

Cheema said that the government hospitals already did not have doctors, other staff and treatment facilities, while the owners of private hospitals were robbing the common man in the name of treatment.

"In addition to the drug Remdesivir which is essential for the treatment of Covid; the black marketing of Amphotericin B drug for black and white fungus is also rampant now," said Cheema, adding that in such a situation, it was by no means right to remove the doctors from the villages. The LoP further said that the Captain government was doing step-motherly treatment with the villagers as they had not been vaccinated nor any help had been given by the government to the poor people who were unemployed due to the lockdown.

He alleged that the Captain government had made the villagers helpless to fight diseases by removing the MBBS doctors. Cheema demanded the Punjab government to stop the mistreatment of the people living in the villages and immediately appoint MBBS doctors in the villages so that the people would not be forced to move to the cities for treatment of Covid and other diseases.

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