E-Paper
MU leaks trying patients? patience
ROOF-LEAKING like bathroom shower, stagnant water all over the floor and a wet bed to recuperate for little Usman. He is lying on the verandah between the surgical ward 4 and 6 on the first floor of the old building at KGMU.
ROOF-LEAKING like bathroom shower, stagnant water all over the floor and a wet bed to recuperate for little Usman.
He is lying on the verandah between the surgical ward 4 and 6 on the first floor of the old building at KGMU.
Usman needs clean environment for speedy recovery. But, the 100-year-old medical institution that spends crores in the name of construction and repair cannot cater even cleanliness for Usman and other such recuperating patients.
Presently, situation inside the buildings under repair at KGMU is like a dingy vegetable market with mud and dirt accumulated in the ward. The entire floor of the verandah from ward-4 gallery to ward-6 was filled with rainwater. Similar was the condition of the neurosurgery and general surgery wards.
Junior doctors on duty shifted to another room when the roof started leaking. Air conditioners installed on the first floor had to be switched off owing to the threat of a short circuit.
60-year-old Sardar, lying near the ward 6 stairs, had to cover himself with quilt to keep warm. He shivered as cold winds came directly to him in the open verandah, where he was kept in the post-operative session.
The situation was no less in the bathrooms that were stinking with stagnated water. But patients were compelled to use the same.
“Wet and humid atmosphere provokes water-borne diseases like Typhoid, gastro-diarrhoea or hepatitis A. As sweating would increase with the rise in humidity surgical infections may happen to patients recuperating after operation,” said a senior doctor.
But the situation hasn’t come in a day or two. It took months as the construction work got delayed resulting into this pathetic situation for patients.
Patients are now compelled to recuperate under threat of hospital-based infection (Nosocomial Infection).
For last two days electricity has also played hide and seek with the patients admitted at the Gandhi Memorial And Associated Hospitals of KGMU. On Sunday electricity was not available for four continuous hours and the situation remained same on Monday.
Though the operating theatres were supported by the generators, patients inside wards suffered even without proper light. Those kept in open verandah struggled hard to keep them safe from the rain that filled the entire area with water.
Talking to some of the attendants revealed what happens in the night. “You cannot sleep even for a moment. Mosquitoes and other insects attack in the night and we are busy chasing them away,” said one of the attendants.
To speed up repair work, Vice Chancellor Prof SK Agrawal took several rounds of the wards and wrote to the engineers and the superintendent to speed up the work. But, all attempts went in vain as the contractors and other authorities know that he has been made VC only for three months and two months have almost gone. Thus no one took heed of his letters and visits.
Similar situation was at the Dr Ram Manohar Lohia hospital where the roof of the ICCU was leaking. Though most of the spots that were leaking have been repaired by the construction agency roof treatment for the ICCU roof is pending.
