While the government is following up on bringing in the medical specialists from Bangladesh, it is also exploring to hire some specialists from India.

Foreign minister Dr Tandi Dorji, at the Friday meet yesterday said many specialists in India have shown interest to come and work in the country.

On hiring specialists from Bangladesh, Lyonpo said that the request and the exchanges have already taken place between the two and the government is following up on it.

The Bangladesh government, he said was also trying to find ways to send doctors from there. “We have understood that the financial package that we have offered is not attractive for the Bangladesh specialists.”

Nevertheless, he said that the government would continue its effort to bring in specialists. “Currently, we have not received any specific number of offers from Bangladesh.”

On if the government is exploring to hire specialists from other countries like Cuba, Lyonpo said that it has not but there are specialists from India who are interested to come and work in Bhutan. “This is good news for us.”

“I think this has come about mainly because of a good media report in the Indian news about our prime minister practicing on Saturdays. There is a lot of interest among medical fraternity in India and his two recent visits in India has also raised a lot of media attention,” Lyonpo said.

A gynaecologist from India has recently joined the national referral hospital and a cardiologist will be joining soon.

Lyonpo said that the Prime minister has asked the health minister to see and talk to the medial fraternity in India on this. “Through this, I think we are quite confident that we can now attract more medical specialists from India.”

With specialists from Bangladesh and India, the government is hopeful that the shortage of specialist in the country would be addressed.

According to the recent state of the nation report, the government has plans to hire specialists from other countries so that it allows specialists in the country to undergo sub-specialisation, ultimately strengthening the human resource requirements in the health system.

Dechen Tshomo