Suhail Bhat
SRINAGAR, Nov 12: The patients and attendants are facing tremendous hardships at the Government Gousia Hospital Khanyar because of the absence of the lift services in the hospital, even though the facility caters to hundreds of patients daily.
Being centrally located, the hospital is frequented by expectant women, and sometimes the women in labour. However, for the non-availability of the elevator in the hospital, their journey from its gate towards the wards becomes extremely difficult. “The orthopaedic patients and those with serious injuries face problems in reaching the concerned wards. In addition, patients moving to different wards on stretchers take a lot of time in the two-storeyed building”, alleged attendants of the patients.
All the OPD and general wards are on the first and the second floors. Hence, people in need of immediate treatment have to either use the stairs or ramps to reach these floors. “Patients face lots of problems here. We sometimes have to take patients downstairs on our shoulders if we cannot move him on a stretcher or a wheelchair,” a ward boy in the hospital told Excelsior.
Patients with serious injuries are most affected as they find it hard to reach the concerned wards. Raqib, a patient with a foot injury, who visited the facility, last night, said: “It was really hard for me to go downstairs and upstairs. The hospital is centrally located and lift services should be available in it”.
A senior doctor told Excelsior that they managed to get a lift for the hospital but shopkeepers raised objections. He said that administration has to help them in getting lift installed in the hospital. He said that since the hospital is centrally located the patient rush is increasing day by day. “Last year we were examining around 300 patients daily now it has gone up to 1000 now. The pregnant ladies, those with fractures and heart attacks face lot of problems and they develop complications in absence of lift”, he added.
Director Health, Dr. Sameer Mattoo, told Excelsior that they are aware of the problem and are working on it. “I visited the hospital few days back. We are on it. The hospital is working on a rented building. The hospital operates from the first and second floors while shops take the ground floor. We are shifting the hospital to a nearby community hall where there is no dearth of space,” he said, adding that all the issues confronting the patient care would be resolved by shifting the hospital.
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