Health Centre or government office?

Getting to meet a doctor at the Panjim Urban Health Center (PUHC) is as much a task as it is to get your job done at a government office. Waiting in line, first to get oneself registered and then to get the consultation with the doctor. 

Waiting in line is a senior citizen couple who live in nearby Caranzalem. “For me, being a senior citizen it doesn’t take much time but for the general category, the people have to wait hours in line,” he said. 

And this is rightly what happens. People queue up outside the centrally located PUHC well before 9 am when the counters open for registration and usually last till 12pm. 

One mother stands with her daughter coughing because of a cold as she holds her other children in her arms. She said that while it was an inconvenience, that she was used to the commotion and looked at it as an everyday task. 

“There are days where we have to wait for hours to see the doctor. Sometimes I have to leave all my work because my children are too small,” she said. 

What many complain of are the two lines that each patient has to stand in. The first being the registration line and then to meet the doctor himself. And what is seen in many cases is the lower income class patients visiting the center. The migrant community accounts for a huge chunk of these patient visitors. 

The reason for the long lines and backlog is probably due to the presence of only two doctors attending to the hundreds that line up outside the 18th June Road health center. 

In the past, the popularity of the health center was made when vaccines for yellow fever were out of stock within a couple of months. Patients were made to wait as early as 6.30am to get a dose that would usually run out by the time the center opened. 

Next door the Homeopathy and Dental Clinic tells the same story as the queue of patients spill onto the pavement. Nurses and doctors indoors try their best, they say to attend to each patient in the least amount of time as possible. However from the looks of it, the serpentine queues will continue to plague the center.