Patna High Court on Friday told the Bihar government to inform it of the number of doctors the State had appointed since March 2016 at different hospitals, including government medical colleges, Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna, and primary health centres, to devise a way out of the shortage of medicos.

The division bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice Anil Kumar Upadhyay, which was hearing a PIL, also directed the government to apprise it of the vacant doctors' posts in government hospitals and what steps the State was taking to fill them.

The petitioner, Jitendra Kumar Singh, had said that of the 3,200 posts of specialist doctors in the state, around 2,000 are lying vacant. Of 5,700 posts of medical officers at government hospitals, nearly 1,800 are vacant.

He also informed the court that most hospitals lack basic infrastructure - beds, medicines and laboratories.

The petitioner's counsel, Manibhushan Pratap Sengar, had told the court that the pathetic condition of the hospitals can be gauged from the fact that on several occasions, doctors are not present; nor are necessary medicines and vaccines available.

The bench had on September 8 directed the government to file an action taken report within two weeks on the PIL which sought the court's attention on the large number of vacant posts of doctors.

However, the government failed to file the ATR today.

#The government had earlier accepted that the situation had been aggravated because government doctors engaged in private practice owing to which they remained absent from hospitals.