Despite the recent modernisation of toilets in the Out Patient Department (OPD) of the Deen Dayal Upadhyay (DDU) Hospital, the condition of the washrooms is only going from bad to worse. While there are only two men’s toilets and one women’s toilet in the entire OPD block, the maintenance is so bad that the sinks in the lavatories are broken, there is no water supply and due to lack of cleanliness and overcrowding, women often have to use the men’s toilet. Though hospital authorities pin the blame on the Public Works Department (PWD) for not responding to the hospitals requests for maintenance, the lackadaisical attitude of the hospital towards cleanliness and hygiene has led to the spread of infection.
The hospital gets a footfall of almost 3,500 patients per day in the OPD itself, there are only three toilets. Patients complain that each toilet just has two cubicles and women only have one such toilet. “I have had to wait up to 45 minutes just to use the washroom because of the crowd. Anyway the toilet is so dirty that it is better not to use it at all,” said Bimla Devi, who had visited the OPD a couple of times. “Earlier the toilets were worse. When the tiling happened, it was believed the condition would be better but there is no one to make sure the toilet stays clean. I think it is only cleaned once in the morning and then left dirty for the rest of the day,” she added.
Nurses in the OPD block said that they were not allowed to use the toilets made for the staff as they were kept under lock and key. “The toilets are always locked and we don’t get access to the key. Only the doctors use the staff toilets,” said one of the nurses in the orthopaedic OPD.
Meanwhile, the medical superintendent Dr Bharat Singh waved off all these complaints saying that the hospital has no space for more toilets and the ones that are there are being maintained as permitted by hospital resources. “We have made several requests to the PWD to repair the broken sinks in the toilets. However, since PWD is not directly under us, they take their own sweet time to do the work. As far as more toilets are concerned, the building needs to be renovated and expanded as per our proposal into a seven-storey building. Right now, we don’t have any space. The hospital is managing whatever it can on the means it has,” he said.