Bone and Joint Hospital suffers from inadequate facilities, poor sanitation and insufficient resources common to all hospitals in Srinagar
Bone & Joints Hospital suffers due to lack of referral system
Samaan Lateef (Greater Kashmir)
Srinagar: The lack of referral system in the state is causing huge inconvenience to the patients admitted in the Valley’s lone Bone and Joints (B&J) hospital at Barzulla here.
Established in 1982 for the population of about 30 lakh, the B&J hospital infrastructure has not been upgraded to cater to the growing population.
The hospital has 140 beds and the influx of patients admitted per day is more than 200, which adds to the congestion of the hospital.
The hospital is getting budget for 140 beds and has to distribute this budget into more than 200 patients, which affects the medicare and the other facilities.
This reporter visited the hospital and saw it being overcrowded, ill equipped, understaffed with inadequate medical facilities.
The condition of the hospital is unhygienic and surrounding is stinking. An insufficient stock of vital drugs and other essential articles reflect on the claims of the hospital administrators that they are coping to the needs of the patients.
In the general wards, many patients complain about the absence of paramedical and other staff even during the duty hours.
“We hardly see any para-medic when we need him,” said a patient admitted in Ward No 3. According to attendants, the food supplied to the indoor patients is below the specified quality.
“The air in the wards and corridors is sickening. Patients who want to get treated here fall sick because of the suffocation and the stink everywhere in the premises of the hospital,” said Abdul Hameed of Gojwara, an attendant.
Huge mounds of garbage, both domestic and bio-medical, lie unattended.
A large number of patients can be seen in queues awaiting the medical officers in the hospital.
Syringes, packets of unused blood, outdated foils of medicines, cotton smeared with blood, body hair are strewn around in this huge dump.
A patient Ghulam Ahmad from Sangrama in Ward No 3, expressing his anguish said, “Lack of medicare, paucity of medicine, screaming and stink is making life difficult here. Hospital authorities are in deep slumber and least bothered.”
Another patient Gowhar Shafi from Natipora accuse paramedical staff of taking bribe said, “My brother had to pay hundred bucks to paramedical staff to let me out of theatre after being operated.”
Stagnant water in trenches provide congenial environment for mosquitoes to breed and proliferate. Old tyres of hospital ambulances are heaped one over the other with stagnant water.
The hospital administrators blame its condition on the referral system.
“Lack of referral system in the health department across the valley is creating the congestion in the hospital. Patients for a single stitch also come here to be treated making the deserving patients suffer,” said Medical Superintendent Bone and Joints hospital, Muhammad Ramzan Mir.
“We have proposed to health department to make referral system implement but they don’t have open policy for it,” he added.
On infrastructure, he said the renovation of hospital will be started very soon and railway type commodes are to be fixed.
In response to the lack of open policy for implementation of referral system by health department, director health Dr Muzaffar Ahmad said, “People don’t approach district hospital for treatment instead come directly to Bone and Joints hospital. Why B&J hospital is taking those patients, which can be treated in district hospitals. They can send them back to district hospitals.”