Assam: Shortage of Intensive Care Specialists to Work in ICUs

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: Assam is facing an acute shortage of intensivists who are specialized doctors trained to work in the Intensive Care Units (ICUs). At present ICUs in six medical colleges & hospitals and other government hospitals — mostly filled with Covid-19 patients — are managed by anaesthetists as their expertise overlaps with intensivists when it comes to duties such as operating the ventilator. "The critical Covid-19 patients develop a severe form of lung injury called ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome). These patients require ventilators for survival.

Shortage of Intensivists Staff in Guwahati, Assam 

To manage and treat such serious patients, government hospitals require a good number of intensivists. But none of the medical colleges in Assam has a separate critical care department to produce intensivists," a source in the Health department said.

Even the State's oldest health institutions namely Gauhati Medical College & Hospital (GMCH), Assam Medical College & Hospital (AMCH), Dibrugarh and Silchar Medical College & Hospitals (SMCH) have a separate department for critical care. The ICUs in these hospitals are managed by surgical or anaesthesia departments, along with their duties in the operation theatre.

Sources said besides the acute shortage of intensivists there is an inadequate number of anaesthetists in the six medical colleges & hospitals and government hospitals in the State. Several posts of anaesthetists in the GMCH, AMCH and the SMCH are still lying vacant. Under such circumstances, there is an acute shortage of doctors to work in ICUs.

A doctor at the GMCH said even though the problem of shortage of intensivists exists in various other States of the country, it is more acute in the case of Assam.

"The gravity of such scarcity has been felt during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic time when the ICUs are overloaded with critical patients. It is high time the State Government not only produced more intensivists but also filled up all vacant posts of anaesthetists. Mere setting up of ICUs in different hospitals by the government is not enough unless and until there are more intensivists to save lives of critical patients," the doctor said.

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