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Health Ministry directs health workers not to accept transfer if it affects services at their duty stations
Normal delivery services, cesarean delivery services, minor surgery, services of neonatal intensive care units, intensive care units have been affected in various health facilities due to staff transfer.Arjun Poudel
The Ministry of Health and Population has directed health workers serving at state-run health facilities across the country to not accept transfer letters if the move stands to affect services at their respective health facilities.
The Health Ministry’s directive follows reports that critical health care services are being severely affected due to health workers’ transfers.
"To continue health care services, we have directed health workers to not accept transfer letters," Mahendra Prasad Shrestha, spokesperson for the Health Ministry, told the Post. "We are also working to cancel the transfer of staff and have them stay at their current service stations."
Normal delivery services, cesarean delivery services, minor surgery, anaesthetic service, services of neonatal intensive care units, intensive care units, critical care units, dialysis services, laboratory services and others have been affected in several health facilities throughout the country due to the transfer of trained manpower.
Most of the nurses and auxiliary health workers, who were trained to serve in operation theatres, dialysis centres, intensive care units, and neonatal intensive care units, have been transferred to health facilities under the local level—rural municipalities, municipalities, sub-metropolitan cities and metropolitan cities, which has caused discontinuation of the existing services, according to Shrestha.
"Due to haphazard transfer of trained manpower from the health sector by the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration, we are struggling to continue the services," Shrestha added. "A health worker trained for one service cannot provide another service. We tried a lot to explain the sensitivity of the matter but they are not interested in listening to us."
Earlier in June, the Health Ministry had issued a similar type of circular asking the health workers to continue the services.
Officials at the Family Welfare Division under the Department of Health Services also blamed the civil servant adjustment process for obstruction of critical health care services like delivery services.
"Most gynaecologists and anaesthetists serving at district hospitals have been transferred to provinces and central-level hospitals," Dr Dhim Singh Tinkari, director at the division, said. "Due to the halt of C-section deliveries, a lot of expecting new mothers have been giving birth to their child at home risking their and their newborn’s lives. Some women are forced to seek services in big cities, which add to their costs."
The division said that cesarean delivery services have been halted in dozens of health facilities including district hospitals for several months.
"All surgery services at Seti Zonal Hospital in Kailali would have been halted for indefinite period, when a nurse, who was trained to serve in the operation theatre, was transferred to a rural municipality," an official at the division, who went to the hospital to resume the surgery services, told the Post on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorised to speak. “If her transfer had come through, it would have been very difficult for us. We somehow retained her."
He said that the nurse, who was trained to serve in the operation centre, was serving there for the last 23 years and was transferred to a health post under a local level of her respective village.