The advisor of Medical and Health Services, to the Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, Dr Navin Balooni made a surprise inspection of the associated hospital of Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) on Thursday. He took note of the facilities and expressed grave concern on slack attitude of the hospital administration. Heaps of garbage and wastes at many places irked the health adviser similarly he was unhappy at the condition of the toilets. Taking the hospital administration to task on lack of sanitation in the hospital, Dr Balooni said that on one hand the Prime Minister of India is consistently talking about ' Swachch Bharat Mission' and asking everyone to keep ones surrounding clean and on other hand the biggest hospital of the state is showing such a bad picture on sanitation. During his inspection Dr Balooni found that many water coolers were also non functional. He said that it is matter of grave concern that the medical college hospital in Dehradun is not able to provide potable water to patients and their relatives. Dr Balooni also inspected the canteen of the hospital, here again he witnessed lack of sanitation. He also tasted the food prepared for the patients. He also interacted with patients in different wards of the hospital. Here one patient informed him that he is not being given the benefit of the Mukhyamantri Swasthya Bima Yojna (MSBY) health card. It was found that his card had got blocked. It is pertinent to mention here that the insurance company has blocked many cards claiming that they are not eligible for MSBY scheme however in this exercise health cards of many genuine beneficiaries also got blocked. Not satisfied with the services and facilities, Dr Balooni asked the Medical Superintendent (MS) of the hospital Dr KK Tamta to resurrect things within a time period of one week.
Dr Balooni visited the isolation ward set up for swine flu patients. He was told that the hospital has adequate stock of medicine and trained staff. He directed the Principal of the GDMC, Dr Pradeep Bharati Gupta and MS Dr Tamta to start facility of Swine flu tests in the department of micro biology. Dr Balooni then inspected the separate ward for the dengue patients. He was informed that not even a single patient of dengue is admitted in the hospital.
The advisor to Chief Minister then visited the female wing of the hospital. Here he found that many beds in the wards were occupied by two patients. The Superintendent of the hospital Dr Meenakshi Joshi said that earlier the hospital had 110 sanctioned beds but after merger in the medical college the number of beds were reduced to half. The hospital administration found itself in quandary when Dr Balooni asked it to open the suggestion box and its keys were nowhere to be found. The box was then broken but it found that it was filled with waste papers and garbage.
later talking to the newsmen the Advisor of CM accepted that lot is needed to be done to improve the condition of the hospital. On the question of district hospital in Dehradun, Dr Balooni said that the state government is looking for a separate place where a multi speciality hospital associated with the medical college would be set up. He said that the Doon hospital would be assigned its original status of district hospital.