BHUBANESWAR: The Government seems to be gradually coming face-to-face with the grim reality of chaotic health scenario in the State. Not to speak of rural Odisha, the district headquarters hospitals (DHHs) stink of a rotten system. And this, despite pumping of huge money and efforts to improve the conditions. While the High Court-appointed Advocates’ Committee has been bringing to the fore serious lapses in the DHHs, Health Minister Prasanna Acharya himself got to know the state-of-affairs during an unscheduled visit to Sambalpur district hospital. A miffed department has issued show-cause notice to the Chief District Medical Officer (CDMO) to explain “para-wise” on each of the points put forth by the Minister during his visit. The Minister had paid a surprise visit to the hospital on February 8 at around 10.15 am only to find severe irregularities. The CDMO was absent from the headquarters on the day of the visit and also the day before. The Additional District Medical Officer (ADMO), Family Welfare, was found absent as well. Just two doctors were available in the hospital when Acharya visited. The attendance register of the medical officers, as verified by the Minister, showed that only two had signed by 10.30 am on the day. The thumb impression biometric attendance system rolled out in the State by the Health department recently is yet to be made fully functional at the hospital. Asked about not signing in the attendance register, the doctors, who reported at a later stage, took the plea of making ward visits. Acharya, who also assessed the infrastructure of the hospital, took strong exception to the lackadaisical approach of the authorities towards maintenance and repair of important equipment and machinery. The QBC machine for detection of malaria parasite in the serum was found to have broken down and lying in an unusable state since several months. But no steps had been taken to get it repaired. The sanitation and biomedical waste disposal system was fraught with serious lapses. The conditions prevailing in the DHH were of the worst nature, the Minister has noted. The poor state of affairs in the hospital is not an isolated case. “Similar or more worse conditions prevail across the hospitals in the State,” amicus curiae and member of the Advocates’ Committee P R Das said. “We have visited about seven DHHs in Khurda, Dhenkanal, Angul, Puri, Keonjhar, Balangir and Sonepur in the past few months. Everywhere, we have come across serious irregularities. The condition of Sonepur DHH, which we visited recently, is worse than a cowshed”, Das noted.
Comments
0 comment