PAMPORE: The Sub-District Hospital in Pampore area of Pulwama district is without Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) specialist since last more than six months now, much to the inconvenience of the general public.
The hospital caters to patients from not only Pampore town but also from dozens of adjacent villages. These people remain completely dependent on the facility for their health care needs.
People lament that the hospital has been left devoid of the ENT specialist for last six months forcing them to visit either the Pulwama district hospital or the hospitals in Srinagar.
“Either way, it becomes a commute of more than 20 kilometers for us to avail the services of an ENT specialist,” the locals complain.
They say that they have been moving from pillar to post to get the attention of the authorities but to no avail.
“Every day hundreds of people suffer because of the non-availability of a doctor here at the SDH. The authorities remain unmoved and no steps whatsoever have been taken so far,” people in the area told Kashmir Reader.
The sources say that worst affected are people visiting the hospital from places other than the Pampore town.
“We now know that the hospital does not have an ENT specialist and act accordingly but the people visiting the hospital from other villages take the long commute to the hospital, only to find that there is no doctor available here,” locals, Kashmir Reader talked to, said.
Kashmir Reader talked to the concerned Block Medical Officer (BMO), Dr Arshid Qazi, who acknowledged that there was no ENT specialist present at the facility as of now.
“The thing is that we do not have a sanctioned post of an ENT specialist at the hospital. A Medical Officer with a post graduate degree in ENT had been making up for the post for a while now,” Qazi told Kashmir Reader.
He said that the concerned Medical Officer, however, has gone on unauthorized absence from his duties. “He is not attending his duties and we are not sure whether he has left his job or not,” he added.
Qazi did not commit on any immediate solution of the issue.

Suhail A Shah