Visakhapatnam: In order to facilitate uninterrupted healthcare services to a section of patients, the authorities cause inconvenience to another section of patients. For the past few days, doctors working at Primary Health Centres (PHCs) in Andhra Pradesh have been staging protests to draw the attention of the government over several long-standing demands. As a result, emergency services across the state have been disrupted.

In a step to attend to patients arriving at the PHCs, homeopathic doctors of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy) have been deployed at these centres. As a result, those making repeated trips to homeo hospitals have to return home disappointed as they could not meet the doctor. Normally, patients who are used to homeo treatments rarely shift to allopathy treatment. However, those visiting the AYUSH Arogya mandir and clinics have no clue about when the doctors would return.

At present, a team of yoga trainers are catering to old patients at the mandir by providing them prescription-based medicines for temporary period. Earlier, yoga trainers used to volunteer at the mandirs for an hour. Now, they are busy from morning to evening due to the patients visits.

While 30 to 50 patients visit AYUSH Arogya mandirs and homeo clinics on a daily basis, about 70 to 100 patients go to Primary Health Centres to avail healthcare services. “Are the patients arriving at the PHCs given much preference over those visiting the the homeo clinics,” questions V Dhana Lakshmi, a patient who visited Simhachalam Arogya mandir.

Expressing disappointment, an 80-year-old homeo patient P Narasinga Rao laments, “For the past one week, I have visited the mandir twice. However, I could not meet the doctor so far.”

Inconvenience fails to evade AYUSH doctors as they are being deployed to various parts of the city PHCs. Even as the government provided an alternative to cater to allopathy patients, homeo patients demand that they should also be given equal priority.