E-Paper
Petty snags ailing health services
PATIENTS AT the three major government hospitals in the city are bearing the brunt of small technical or administrative faults.
PATIENTS AT the three major government hospitals in the city are bearing the brunt of small technical or administrative faults.
The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), despite being installed, is lying idle at Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital; CathLab is awaited at Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (Civil) Hospital and many endoscopies are withheld at the Balrampur Hospital.
Interestingly, all major problems have no big reasons.
The MRI at Lohia is installed but due to a delay in fixing of rates, the machine is not performing. It was decided that the rates would be kept low to benefit the poor. But, even though three months have passed after the installation, the machine has yet to start.
As the chief medical superintendent of the hospital said, “A high-level meeting has been conducted by the DG (medical health) and rates are expected to be fixed at around Rs 3,000. A decision regarding criteria for free MRI facility is yet to be decided after which we would start utilising the machine.”
Civil Hospital has to start the CathLab for heart patients and equipment worth Rs 2.5 crore has been installed. But what’s delaying it is a small part of the machine -one that costs Rs 22 lakh.
“The supplier has been contacted in this regard several times but the latter insist that since the part is an accessory, extra payment should be done,” says Civil Hospital chief medical superintendent Dr HN Tripathi.
He said initially there was an agreement with the company that all supporting parts of the machine would be provided. But, later the company began asking for more money.
The story is no different at Balrampur Hospital. The endoscopy unit is not functioning here since the doctor trained to run the unit was transferred in 2005 and the one who joined in his placed got transferred too. Dr AK Bhatt was initially trained to run the unit but he was transferred right after he returned from training. For some time the unit remained defunct and then Dr SC Srivastava took over charge. He too got transferred in April 2006 leaving the unit defunct.
Thus, patients at these three major hospitals of the city are suffering for small causes even as the State makes tall claims about public health care.
