BADNAPUR (JALNA), DEC 5: It's 10 o'clock in the morning and nearly two hours since the staff at the Badnapur public health centre (PHC) threw open the door. But not a soul is in sight anywhere near its vicinity. While six beds lie vacant as they do for most part of the year.Three years in the same post, medical officer Dr P S Sontakke knows that his services might not be called for till 11.30 am when he may expect an occasional out-patient steps in complaining of a minor ailment. ``Cough, cold, general weakness and the rampant diarrhea in monsoon, that's all we can fight here. Anything more `serious' just cannot be helped,'' the doctor says.Normal deliveries are welcome. But should an occasion arise for the use of a forceps, the case will be promptly labelled as one of `difficult labour' and forwarded to the district place. ``No one with the least concern for his good life, ever peeps into any of the 34 PHCs that dot Jalna district,'' says Dyaneshwar Ingale of Badnapur, which has a population of over8000. Officially, each of these PHCs is supposed to `cater' to a population of 36,000 scattered across 30 villages and separated by several kilometers. Little wonder then, when on November 22, the State Government pulled out 25 doctors from this mesh of PHCs and posted them at the Government Medical College and Hospital, Aurangabad, following the statewide strike by the resident doctors, villages hardly noticed their absence.In the remote village of Wakudni, (population 2400), Indubai Dhanedhar, the sarpanch of the 2400 people in Wakudni, is herself unaware of the whereabouts of the doctors at the PHCs. For a change, this PHC has a steady flow of patients, who do not mind being treated by the paramedical staff.``How can the government do that to us people,'' she screams when told that one of the two doctors at the PHCs has been deputed to the government hospital at Aurangabad. But, cursing her colleagues in the panchayat for not backing her up on developmental issues, she soon withdraws her hastilyannounced decision to `take up the matter with higher-ups'. No one ever pays heed to my pleading, she says plaintively.Doctors for their part are wary of encouraging any visits to the hospital in the fear it may to lead to high expectations from them.
