Assam state dispensary at Indo-Bangladesh border running without doctors, patients administered by a pharmacist

The patient to doctors ratio has always been a challenge to any govt-run hospital in India. But how about a state health dispensary running without a single doctor?

Residents of Dimakuri under Dhubri district, a last-mile village near the Indo-Bangladesh border have been living a fragile life for the past couple of months.

Notably, a hospital at the Indo-Bangladesh border, Berbhangi State Dispensary in Dimakuri under Dhubri district is running without any doctors and completely at the mercy of the pharmacist, who is the sole person administering patients as well as medicines.

Although an MBBS graduate is compulsory to serve duty in rural areas of the state, locals allege that the doctor who was appointed a month back is yet to join the dispensary.

"The doctor is yet to come here and attend to the patients, it's only the pharmacists who are looking after the patients and giving medicines which is not the process", a local said.

Speaking to India Today NE, a local alleged that Akirul Rahman joined the state dispensary several months ago but now the hospital's pharmacist Mubarak Khandkar is treating the patients as the doctor is serving patients somewhere else as per the direction of the Deputy Commissioner.

It is to mention here that patients are been administered saline water in the waiting area itself, as there are no beds.

Further, the locals urged the Assam government to make the hospital at least a 50-bedded hospital so that people get treatment. 

But it is noteworthy that the dispensary at the Indo-Bangladesh border does not have a single bed which is serving three gaon panchayat- Naliya, Binnasara, and Berbhangi as such patients are been administered saline water at the waiting area itself.

Locals have demanded the government immediately appoint doctors to the hospital and construct a properly designed hospital at the earliest.