Guwahati: Assam Medical College and Hospital in Dibrugarh is buckling under a severe staffing crisis. The facility currently lists 121 vacant doctor positions out of 434 sanctioned posts. That leaves nearly 28 per cent of the medical staff missing across 23 different departments. The hospital struggles to keep units running with dwindling numbers of junior doctors and support staff.
Transfers to new medical colleges in Tinsukia and Lakhimpur gutted the workforce. The hospital management has yet to fill these empty roles. Nursing levels remain frozen at 449 workers, exactly where they stood in 1947. Back then, the institution managed 900 beds. Now, it operates with nearly 2,000 beds.
The nursing staff bears the brunt of the imbalance. Night shift employees often juggle between 150 and 200 patients at once. The result is a dangerous lack of individual attention. One report noted, "The shortage has increased the workload on nurses, with one nurse reportedly attending to between 150 and 200 patients during night shifts."
High patient volume from Upper Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Nagaland pushes the facility to its breaking point. Grade IV staff vacancies add more weight to the exhausted team. Meanwhile, critical diagnostic machines like MRI and CT scanners break down constantly. Patients from poor backgrounds must pay private labs for tests when the hospital hardware fails. Despite a wider expansion of medical colleges across the state, this institution remains caught in a deepening cycle of neglect.
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