The State administration gave appointments to 172 dental doctors selected by Uttarakhand Medical Services Selection Board (UMSSB) here on Wednesday. These dental doctors are appointed in the hospitals located in the remote and mountainous areas and they would also double up as allopathic doctors in the hospitals where there is no doctor.
The Health Advisor to the Uttarakhand Chief Minister, Dr Navin Balooni told The Pioneer that these dental doctors would be appointed in mountainous areas. He said doctors would be provided with some training after which they will be able to provide general treatment to the patients in the hospitals where there are no doctors.
The health services of Uttarakhand are severely affected by acute shortage of doctors would soon get a much needed relief from appointment of these doctors.
To provide strength to the State health services reeling under acute shortage of doctors the State Government decided to recruit dental doctors.
It is worth mentioning here that out of total 2,711 posts of doctors in 993 Government health centres of State health services, as much as 1,615 posts are vacant at present.
The selection board of UMSSB had declared the result of the dental doctors’ recruitment examination in September this year.
The selection board had selected 53 dental doctors on the vacant posts in the dental cadre while 119 candidates were selected in the additional dental cadre against vacant posts of allopathic doctors. The UMSSB, however, could not find suitable candidates for 28 posts which were reserved for scheduled caste (SC) and three that were reserved for Other Backward castes (OBC).
For recruitment of 203 posts of Dental doctors for state health services the UMSSB had conducted an entrance examination on January 22 this year. After the written test the board invited 440 candidates for the interviews which were held in the month of July. The candidates were interviewed by different selection boards from July 24 to July 28.