The water crisis and shortage of coolers at one of Asia’s biggest public hospitals, the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Nagpur has left patients, their kin, attendants, high and dry in this sweltering summer heat. It has come to fore that GMCH has shortage of nearly a hundred cooler. It should be noted that GMCH requires 300 coolers, but has only around 200-215 coolers installed at the hospital.
However, on one end, the condition of patients, relatives inside the ward is pathetic, while on the other hand resident doctors have air-conditioners installed at their rooms in the MARD hostel. Going against the rule, several ACs could be seen at the resident doctors rooms. Noted that every year, GMCH pays nearly 1.3 crore of electricity bill, the major part of which comes from medical equipment. But the illegal usage of ACs at the hostel room have raised questions upon the unfair and ignorant behavior of administration towards poor patients.
“This is the peek time when almost all the wards are full at GMCH. However, the administration is least bothered about providing adequate facilities to patients”, said the source.
Shockingly, the coolers even at the Cold ward in GMCH is down. Along with this, the coolers were seen in-operable at medicine ward, cold ward etc. It must be noted that hospitals have set up cold wards where they deal with patients of summer diseases, like sun stroke, Gastro, jaundice etc. However, the situation is contradictory.
This undoubtedly brings out the shameless attitude of GMCH administration who can keep the ACs at medical superintendent and staff’s cabins, but do not have coolers for wards.
GMCH, which caters to nearly a lakh patients a year, needs 30 lakh litre of water daily. But, Orange City Water (OCW) is able to supply 25 lakh litre of water to them in a day. Among 45 wards that are present at GMCH, the maximum requirement is specially at medicine ward, gynecology ward, surgery ward.
A source told LT that the water supply pipeline at GMCH breaks down very often. “Even several complaints have been filed at Imamwada police station regarding it. The nearby residents break the pipeline to turn the water supply to their home. This creates an additional burden on GMCH. Due to this, GMCH is unable meet the daily requirement of 10 lakh litres of water,” said the source.
To this, Dr Rajesh V Gosavi, superintendent of GMCH said that he has no idea about how many coolers are there in the ward but their is no crisis or even shortage. “We have absolutely enough coolers for the wards and each one of them is working. These claims are false”, he added. Despite telling him the actual situation at wards, Dr Gosavi paid no heed to it.
