Bengal Health Dept raises ceiling on trainee reserve doctors

Kolkata, Aug 7 (IANS) The West Bengal Health Department on Friday issued a notification increasing the ceiling on the maximum permissible number of doctors that can be kept under the “trainee reserve” category.

Earlier, the figure was 477 and, as per the state government notification, henceforth the number of in-service doctors that can be kept in the “trainee reserve” category will be increased to 662.

“Trainee reserve” category doctors are in-service government medical officers who are temporarily released from their regular duties, but continue to be in service, to pursue government-sponsored postgraduate (PG) degree or diploma courses. This facility is extended mainly to medical officers posted in rural or remote medical outposts.

According to a senior officer of the Health Department, the decision has been taken to increase the number of specialist doctors in the state-run medical system in West Bengal.

Medical officers from the categories of West Bengal Health Service, West Bengal Public Health Administrative Service and West Bengal Health Education Service are included under this “trainee reserve” category.

The West Bengal Doctors’ Forum welcomed the decision. They said that following the move, more doctors will get the opportunity to pursue higher studies.

“Earlier, if the limit of ‘trainee reserve’ was filled, many doctors were deprived of the opportunity to go for higher studies like MD or MS courses even if they were eligible. Now, many more doctors will be able to take leave to pursue higher studies. As a result, the number of specialist doctors will increase in West Bengal. The quality of future services will improve further. The possibility of postgraduate seats getting wasted will also be ruled out following the increase in the number of ‘trainee reserve’ category,” a forum representative said.

The demand to raise the ceiling for the “trainee reserve” category doctors had been raised for a long time by different forums of medical practitioners in the state, who argued that the increase would help avoid, or at least reduce, the wastage of postgraduate seats in medical sciences.

After the regime change in West Bengal, the new state government, with a practising doctor as the state’s new Health Minister, assured positive steps on this count.

–IANS

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