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Patna,(BiharTimes): Health Minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey said that Principal Secretary, Health, Amarjeet Sinha, would probe the purchase of catheter and intra-cath in the last four financial years beginning 2007-08 made by the Darbhanga Medical College Hospital (DMCH). He would also ascertain if any irregularity has been committed in the process. |
The minister order followed speaker Uday Narayan Chaudhary’s instruction to the health minister to get the alleged irregularities probed by any senior official.
The issue was raised in the state Assembly on Friday by Darbhanga BJP MLA, Sanjay Sarawagi, who insisted on probe by the Vigilance department, or the DGP, or even by the development commissioner. The minister said that he would get it probed by the health department principal secretary, since it has not yet been established that any economic crime has been committed, nor has any first information report (FIR) lodged in this connection.
He added that the health secretary would complete the probe and submit his report within a month. The speaker also asked Choubey to shift the storekeeper to some other place or work to facilitate proper probe and prevent tampering of evidence, if any.
According to the MLA the storekeeper-cum-medical officer at DMCH Ghanshyam Jha, has been serving at this post for the last 32 years. He also said that evidence was being tampered to short circuit the probe earlier ordered into other matters of DMCH.
Earlier, the MLA, through a short-notice question, sought to know from the minister the number of catheters and intra-caths purchased at DMCH. He maintained that the purchases, in fact, were made only on paper, and in the process, pointed out that irregularities have been committed on a largescale.
Choubey said that 20,000 catheters were purchased in 2007-08, 39,300 in 2008-09, and 7,000 in 2010-11. He said that the number of patients admitted in 2007-08 was 32,778, in 2008-09 the figure was 34,479, in 2009-10 it was 29,871 and in 2010-11 it was 33,356.
Similarly, 1.60 lakh intra-caths were purchased in 2007-08, 1.60 lakh in 2008-09, 1.30 lakh in 2009-10 and 2.24 lakh in 2010-11.
Upon this Sarawagi, through his supplementary questions, said that catheters were used by only five to seven percent of patients, and an intra-cath applied on a patient lasts for around seven days, implying that the number of catheters and intra-caths purchased were not in proportion to the annual intake of patients at the DMCH, as the normal life of a catheter and intra-cath is of five years.
It is here that senior Congress MLA Sadanand Singh intervened. There was heated exchange between him and the minister when the latter said that though he had served as the Speaker of the House he did not know the rule.
It is upon this that Uday Narayan Chaudhary asked the minister to order probe.
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