At the time when the District Headquarters Hospital (DHH) is being upgraded to facilitate establishment of a Government medical college and hospital (MCH), scheduled to take off before the coming academic session, the basic healthcare facilities in the DHH are in a shambles.
The patients depending on the DHH, Baleswar, including those from the neighbouring districts and States, are facing untold woes due to lack of facilities. The bottlenecks include shortage of staff, especially specialists and paramedics. Besides, there has been a scarcity of beds as well.
The DHH although is claimed to be equipped with ultrasound facility, yet most of the days the patients are deprived of the test. The ultrasound unit remains shut most of the time. And the reason stated to be want of adequate number of specialists.
For instance on Thursday, patients from far and wide while arrived to avail the facility of ultrasound installed in the DHH, they were harassed to see a sign board which was hanged there stating the unit was closed.
The patients and relatives alleged that it was a deliberate ploy of the authorities for patronising the private facilities for vested interest.
“The poor patients who arrive here from remote rural pockets with a high hope suffer a lot. Since the ultrasound facility remains closed for most of the days, the patients in emergency pay through their nose in private facility finding no alternative,” alleged attendant of a patient, who couldn’t avail the ultrasound facility.
Not only the ultrasound, the surgery patients too suffered in the want of anesthetists.
The authorities, however, have a different take on the issue. Additional Medical Officer SS Chaudhary said, “ We have only one doctor who is trained on the ultrasound analysis.
Whenever he is deployed on night duty, the following day he remains off duty. Similarly, we couldn’t have a regular antitheist despite apprising the department time and again. The surgery part is managed through a doctor on deputation (posted in Nilgiri).”