FOR BETTER HEALTH

AIYL wants Medical College in Cooch Behar

 

Cooch Behar district unit of All India Youth League have been engaged in organising public opinions for setting up of a medical college and better medical facilities in Cooch Behar.

 

Demanding setting up of a medical college in Cooch Behar, they had staged a sit-in demonstration on 27 August. They had also submitted a memorandum containing 12-point charter of demands to the state health minister through the district magistrate and the CMOH. On Monday, the AIYL activists took out a rally in the town reiterating their demands.

 

General secretary of the Cooch Behar district unit of AIYL Mr Gopal Dey said the healthcare service system in Cooch Behar was almost on the verge of breakdown. There is a single medical college only for the six districts of north Bengal. Very often the patients have to depend on the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital. A large section of the doctors in the government hospitals in the districts grew a practice to refer patients to the NBMCH to avoid their responsibilities. In this perspective a new medical college and hospital is needed in Cooch Behar, he argued.

 

The AIYL leader demanded introduction of CT scan facility at the MJN Hospital. The state government already approved the scheme and a fund was also allocated but there is no visible initiative to add this facility in the hospital, he complained. The CT scan facility should be made available against cheap rate to the economically weaker section of the people, he said.

 

Mr Dey said upgradation of JD Hospital into a state general hospital, appointment of doctors in all vacant posts, availability of blood bank facility in the sub-divisional hospitals for 24-hours, halt on supply of lower grade diet to the patients, appointment of gynaecologists in all block health centres, screening of all private pathological laboratories and x-ray clinics and stopping of the middleman system in the blood banks are some of the other demands the AIYL was struggling for. []