Qualified urologists in UP: 120 for 20 crore people

LUCKNOW: For over a month, Anoop suffered from abdominal pain and was popping painkillers to curb it. The 44-yearold patient could get some relief only when he changed his doctor and visited a urologist.

Anoop is not the lone case. In Uttar Pradesh, about 40% patients requiring treatment from urologists have no option but to visit physicians because the number of the former is very less.

“We do not have adequate number of urologists. Those available have scores of patients every day,” said Dr Vinod Jain, member, governing body, UP State Medical Faculty.

As per the available data, there are 120 urologists in the state (implying one urologist for 16 lakh people) of which 35 are in Lucknow, leaving just 65 for the rest of the districts.

“The relative distribution of urologists is unclear in the state. If you assess the geographic distribution of urologists throughout the state, apparently you will find majority of urology experts practice in four or five major cities,” said Dr Jain.

“I had 209 patients in my OPD on Monday and only 85 of them were from Lucknow. The remaining patients visited from other districts where there are no urologists,” said Prof SN Sankhwar, head of Urology department, King George’s Medical University.

In institutes such as PGI and KGMU, one can find over 100 urology patients in queue at any given point of time. “Ideally urologists should see 50 patients but they are compelled to see up to 150 in a day,” he added.

“It’s not just simple cases but even those with most compli- cated conditions come to us in each OPD. Every week we have one HIV+ case because in other cities urologists avoid handling such cases,” said Prof Vishwajeet Singh, senior faculty of urology, KGMU.

Because of the overload, KGMU doctors often face the allegations of delay in treatment.

“It is difficult to handle the load. Therefore patients who cannot bear the pain visit general surgeons who have little knowledge of urology they get when they are posted in the urology department during their residentship,” said Prof Vishwajeet.