: Chief Minister N. Rangasamy on Wednesday announced that the Puducherry government had planned to outsource services of specialists from Chennai to perform open heart surgeries in the Indira Gandhi Government General Hospital and Postgraduate Research Institute.
Inaugurating a 128 multi-slice CT scanner and other amenities at the GH, he said that the government would soon enter into a memorandum with hospitals and outsource the services of specialists to perform open heart surgeries.
Though the Puducherry Government Hospital was equipped with the latest of facilities including an advanced Cardica Cath lab that can take care of all investigations shortage of specialists was a major problem.
Mr. Rangasamy said that a majority of specialist doctors who were appointed from the Union Public Service Commission were from the Northern States. As a result they were not willing to stay in Puducherry for more than two months.
This caused several practical difficulties.
The government should have the authority to appoint specialists on its own in all government hospitals in the Union Territory.
He said that his government wanted to make specialised health care services at the government hospitals and had inked Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with leading hospitals so patients needing specialist treatment and surgeries could have them locally instead of being referred to Chennai.
The government had outsourced specialists for performing knee replacement surgeries and to treat children born with congenital heart defects.
The Chief Minister also honoured regular donors such as Dr. Edith Jasmine during the celebrations of National Voluntary Blood Donation Month organised by the Pondicherry AIDS Control Society, Pondicherry Council of Blood Transfusion at the Government Hospital.
Ms. Jasmine has been donating blood regularly for the past 41 years.
Over the years she has donated blood 137 times.
