Hubballi: Shortage of manpower could be a hindrance to the health department to provide hassle free service to delegates visiting the 84th Akhila Bharata Kannada Sahitya Sammelana which starts in Dharwad on January 4 next year.In a bid to deal with situation, the health committee of the Sammelana has requested KIMS and SDM Hospital authorities to depute their doctors during the meet. District health officer ( DHO ) Dr Rajendra Doddamani, who is also the working president of health committee, told TOI that thousands of people, including delegates, will visit Dharwad during the meet. “Diabetes and hypertension are common among the public and patients need immediate treatment if they have any health issues. So, it’s challenging for us to should provide timely treatment to all visiting delegates without affecting service at our PHCs and district hospital,” he said.“We have a 69 sanctioned strength of doctors in the district and 24 doctors in the district civil hospital. We have 32 PHCs, 19 urban health centres, of which 24 PHCs provide 24X7 service. We need at least one doctor, an Ayush doctor and nursing staff to maintain each 24x7 PHC. Besides, we have 19 government ambulances and 22 (108) ambulances in the district. But we don’t want to disturb regular health services by deploying this staff to the literary meet. So, we have planned to take help from SDM and KIMS,” the DHO added.“We have requested Gadag, Haveri, Bagalkot, Karwar and Belagavi health department to provide two ambulances each. We have already had talks with SDM and KIMS authorities and requested each of them to provide 10 doctors, 10 PG students and 10 house surgeons,” said Dr Doddamani.This apart, we have also reserved 10 beds each in KIMS, SDM and district hospitals for three days exclusively for treatment of persons visiting the Sammelana. We will also use some of our staff to serve people during the meet to avoid inconvenience,” he added.“We have got a positive response from SDM and KIMS and other hospitals of the five districts to get ambulances and manpower and we are capable of handling the situation now,” he added.

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