At noon on Thursday, a lot of people were waiting for their turn to purchase outpatient department (OPD) tickets at the Provincial Hospital of Madhesh Institute of Health Sciences in Janakpurdham, Dhanusha. However, there were no specialist hospitals on duty. Patients waited till 3 pm, but the doctors were nowhere to be seen.

While the names of several doctors, including Dr. Siddhidatri Jha, Dr. Ramdev Chaudhary, Dr. Bipin Kumar Yadav, Dr. Digbijaya Kumar Thakur, Dr. Rameshwar Mahaseth, Dr. Shyam Babu Sah, and Dr. Tarakeshwar Mahato, were listed on the duty roster, only Dr. Siddhidatri Jha was on duty attending to patients. Dr. Thakur had taken leave, but the others remained conspicuously absent without notifying the hospital administration.

In the pediatric department, where four doctors, including Dr. Baidyanath Thakur, Dr. Abhaya Mandal, Dr. Jamun Prasad Singh, and Dr. Jitendra Dhakur, were expected to be on duty, none were in attendance. Among the four doctors assigned to the gynecology department, only three were present, as Dr. Shweta Sah was absent without prior communication with the hospital administration.

The patients, who were waiting since 11 am, had no option but to return home. Some were compelled to seek medical care at private hospitals. Bindeshwar Yadav of Janakpurdham-2, who was waiting to see doctors for his swollen limbs, looked frustrated. "I have been waiting for hours, but I am not sure whether the doctors will arrive," he added. Amod Yadav from Mirchaiya in Siraha echoed the sentiment. “I have been waiting for hours for a doctor to review my report. But the doctor was nowhere to be found,” he added.

This mess is not because the hospital is seeing a shortage of doctors. There are adequate doctors on the hospital’s payroll. However, the visible absence of doctors attending to patients is worrying. Sushil Karna from Janakpur said that most government doctors are attending to patients at private hospitals. "The doctors come, sign the attendance register, and then rush off to attend to patients in private hospitals," he said, adding, "When we ask for doctors, the nurses give us a hard time."

Patients say that a majority of the government doctors work in private hospitals or their own clinics to earn extra income. "Doctors do come to the hospital but often leave around noon. Unfortunately, we cannot question them," a contractual employee at the hospital said. Many employees at the hospital share the sentiment that doctors typically arrive late and leave early. “Since all the doctors have strong political affiliations, they do what they want to,” a staff nurse at the hospital said. “These doctors are expected to be at the hospital from 10 am to 4 pm, but they rarely stay for more than two hours.”