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Jailbirds turn hospital into a picnic spot!
BALRAMPUR HOSPITAL is becoming a picnic spot for jail inmates. They come here for everything except treatment. They meet friends, fix up deals, hang around with spouse and have home cooked food. At the end of the day they ask doctors for another date, as their clinical examination and pathological tests could not be conducted.
BALRAMPUR HOSPITAL is becoming a picnic spot for jail inmates. They come here for everything except treatment.
They meet friends, fix up deals, hang around with spouse and have home cooked food. At the end of the day they ask doctors for another date, as their clinical examination and pathological tests could not be conducted.
Hospital’s Prisoner Register reveals the story. It shows a vast different in the number of prisoners who came complaining sever illness and the ones actually admitted in December.
Over 150 jail inmates came this month and only 6 were serious enough to be admitted. Reason. Most of them came with pain in chest and stomach, which was treated only with medicine.
Few were admitted but only those who really had problem. Mangal (70) was admitted on December 2 with severe burn injury and Ajay Kumar (62) was admitted on December 4 with low Blood Pressure.
Ram Vijay (22) and Pappu (25) were the other two who got admitted for Anaemia. On December 30, it was and Awed (28) who got admitted for Low BP and Dehydration.
Says medical superintendent Dr Vinod Kumar, there are doctors at jail but the gravity of pain which a prisoner shows compels them to send most of the prisoners to hospitals for lab tests.
Hospital authorities say, prisoners take an OPD slip but do not visit doctor during the OPD timings. After passing time they come to doctors virtually gasping and complain severe pain just to confuse doctors about diagnosis. The doctors then refer tests like ECG, Ultrasound, and X Ray, which become the reason for prisoners to come next day.
“Emergency services are open round the clock but OPD timings conclude at 2 pm and these prisoners know this fact very well,” Dr Kumar said.
It may be mentioned that Balrampur hospital has the onus to take care of the patients from the jail but it is short of security for that reason. Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee hospital has more guards then Balrampur.
On Thursday only around a dozen jail inmates reached the hospital for check-up when the state’s medical and health minister was also there, to visit a relative.
Tussle took place between prisoners and hospital authorities when the later refused to give them next day’s date and all this when the minister was there.
There is something more that works in favour of these prisoners.
“We get phone calls from politicians and even mafia to admit such prisoner. They pressurise us for diagnosing serious illness which can hold back the prisoner at least for a week or two,” said a senior doctor at Balrampur.
