Central Police Hospital: Who’ll right the wrong?

One should not neglect health care, nor should one allow it to be neglected. In modern way of life the cost of quality health care is very high. One of the hard facts in India, as is the case in Assam as well, is that quality health care is beyond everybody’s reach. Generally only the affluent people can spend like anything to get quality health care. The poor, however, cannot. They have to rely on government hospitals and dispensaries where the health care services are not that prompt for one or the other reasons. Even then the rush of patients to government hospitals is always high. Given the population boom in India, and Assam for that matter, there should have been workable systems that can address the huge of problem of sickness among the population at their affordable cost. Take the health care system in Assam. Apart from a network of medical colleges and hospitals, the State has a network of district hospitals, public health centre (PHCs), dispensaries etc. However, the health care system provided by the State Health and Family Welfare department is certainly not adequate enough to attend to the huge sick population in the State. The rush to government health institutions would have been even heavier had there been no other institutions that cater to the health care needs of their respective target populations. Outside the ambit of the State Health and Family Welfare department’s health care institutions, there are many more institutions that also render heath care services to their target groups of people. Take the case of NF Railway. It has a network of health care institutions that render health care services to Railway employees and their immediate dependents, besides others. It is the bounden duty of government organizations to provide affordable health care services to its employees and their dependents. And it is all the more essential for people in combat troops like the army, paramilitary forces and police personnel. This is an area in which organizations can take their cue from the defence organizations that have a big corps – the Army Medical Corps (AMC) – rendering one of the finest health care services to defence personnel and their families. The Armed Forces Medical Services is the first tri-service (Army, Navy and Air Force) organization and one of the largest organized medical services in the country with state-of-the-art hospitals and speciality centres of excellence. A defence personnel may be guarding the nation’s border in the Siachen glacier or in the country’s easternmost State of Arunachal Pradesh, but he is rest assured that the department would ensure all medical facilities to his family members at affordable cost in the event of them falling ill in his absence. Even factories and other establishments employing ten or more workers earning Rs 21,000 per month or less contribute 3.25 per cent (0.75 per cent by the employee) of the worker’s salary according to the Rules and Regulations in the ESI Act 1948 to oversee the provision of medical and cash benefits to the employees and their family. This is a type of social security scheme for employees in the organized sector. Services being rendered by an employer establishment to its employees for their health care show how caring the establishment is for them.

Strange as it may seem, the Assam Police also has a 125-year-old hospital – the Central Police Hospital – at Panbazar in Guwahati. It was set up by the British Colonists way back in 1895. However, the hospital reeks of utter negligence on the part of the authorities to the health care of the police personnel and their families. As reported on the front page on the January 31, 2020 issue of this daily the hospital is ‘just a pale shadow of its former self. From any aspect – cleanliness, hygienic ambience, infrastructure and medical equipment – it does not look like a hospital’. They say truth is stranger than fiction, and the condition of this hospital is a glaring example of this popular saying. One is baffled as to why the authorities concerned did not have the upgrading of the hospital in their minds when the hospital building was renovated in 2005 (as seen in a plaque at the site). Is it that the health care of the police personnel and their family members is not that important for them? Who’s counting how many Home Commissioners and DGPs came and went since 1895 in Assam, but one certainly feels pity on their perpetual neglect to police personnel and their families’ health care aspect. Isn’t it the bounden duty of the present incumbent in the State Home Department or in the Assam Police Headquarters to right the wrong which their predecessors did to the police personnel of the State and their families over the years? Will they do it or just follow the footsteps of their predecessors on this matter? If they do, who among them will do it and when?