Cuttack, July 22: Some vacant posts of doctors at Acharya Harihar Regional Cancer Centre here are going to be filled up with the appointment of 11 doctors. The process is likely to be completed within 15 days.

“We have selected 11 doctors. Within a period of 15 days, they will join the hospital,” said director of the centre Sukdev Nayak.

Hospital authorities said steps had been taken to address the issue of dearth of doctors and other medical staff members at the centre. But, even after the scheduled appointments, some posts of the medicos will remain vacant here as those fall into the reserve category.

“Earlier, we had issued advertisements twice, inviting applications for the posts of doctors under the reserved category. However, we received no application. We are going to issue another advertisement by next month,” Nayak said.

The director said there were also plans to upgrade the regional cancer centre into an apex centre, and soon, they would submit a detailed report on the requirement of the infrastructure, equipment and manpower, including doctors, to the Centre.

Official sources said out of the sanctioned 56 posts of doctors, 26 were lying vacant at the 241-bed premier cancer institute in the state.

Two posts of associate professors against the sanctioned nine, 16 assistant professors and six senior resident posts, too, are lying vacant. Moreover, 22 posts each in Group D (sweepers and attendants) and Group B (Class III), which includes administrative officials and nurses, are also vacant.

Seven associate professors, 13 assistant professors and four senior resident doctors are sharing the centre’s workload.

“The existing vacancies are creating problems as our workload has increased manifolds. We are also not able to deal with the rush of nearly 250 to 300 patients a day at the outdoor,” said a senior doctor requesting anonymity.

The cancer patients have to wait for over 15 days for surgery as there are two surgical operation theatres here. Similarly, lack of equipment to carry out investigations, X-Ray, ultra sound and MRI tests is also causing inconvenience to the patients.

“I have conducted all tests of my wife, who is suffering from mouth cancer, at a private diagnostic centre as there are no such facilities at this hospital,” said Prakash Mahanta, a Mayurbhanj resident.

At present, around 1,000 cancer patients are being treated by surgery, 2,000 patients by radiation therapy and 6,000 cases by chemotherapy at the centre annually.

The hospital registers an annual inflow of around 20,000 patients.