Even though the State Government claims to have been providing quality health services to people with free medicines under the Niramaya Yojana, reality is somehow different as many Government hospitals do not have stocks of essential lifesaving drugs, not to say about instruments and availability of doctors. Such a situation often prevails at the Capital Hospital here too.
According to allegations, essential injections like tetanus, anti-rabies and anti-venom (fir snake bites) injections and life saving medicines are not available at the hospital most of the time.
“The Niramaya Yojana announced by the State Government to provide free health services and medicines to people remains to be a nonstarter in this hospital on which lakhs of people depend,” said a senior citizen.
Narrating a case, he lamented that the Director and the Principal of the hospital also don’t have satisfactory answer to these problems.
It is revealed that the newly-formed Medicine Corporation has been entrusted the job of supplying free medicines to the Government hospitals. But, the corporation is yet to supply medicines regularly.
The Health and Family Welfare Department is also not reviewing performance of this corporation.
For these persisting problems, the hospital has not yet been upgraded into a super speciality and referral hospital even as the Government has already made announcement in this regard.
Hundreds of patients are not getting free medicines even after standing in queues for hours and they are being forced to buy such medicines from private medicine stores.
People belonging to different walks of life have demanded that the Chief Minister, the Health Minister and the Health Secretary soon intervene and resolve the problems at the earliest.