Patients suffer as Digboi Hospital lacks basic medical requirements

From our Correspondent

DIGBOI, DEC 11: The Community Health Centre in Digboi is lying in doldrums which has become a cause of resentment among the people of oil city Digboi in Tinsukia district.

During a visit to the hospital and its premises by a media group recently, multiple allegations were made by the people and the patients waiting to see the doctors. The hospital, which State Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma dreamt of making a model hospital equipped with all possible modern technologies, lacks even the basic requirements, including TT injection and syringe, which have to be purchased by the patients themselves from the open market. “Since we have not received the syringes and TT injection, we have put a notice outside the dispensary,” said a senior nurse.

For patients under maternity treatment, the basic and necessary pathological tests were also not conducted in the hospital reasons best known to Dr Gautam Saikia, the in-charge of the hospital. A hospital source informed that the patients were referred to Agarwal Nursing Home in Digboi town for X-ray and other tests for the sake of earning commission which ranges from Rs 200 to Rs 350.

Meanwhile, when asked about the reasons for the presence of several visiting medical representatives during the morning working hours, Dr Saikia, in-charge, said that the medical representatives keep visiting the hospital but he did not meet any during the office hours. The Health Minister had recently reminded of the doctors regarding restriction on the visit of medical representatives in the hospitals to check promotion of private business of vested groups.

However, what was shocking about the hospital and its magement committee is the maintence of the hospital surroundings as a huge dump of garbage had piled up behind the hospital within its premises. Several complaints were also made by the residents of Puja Field sharing a common boundary with that of the hospital. They complained of facing inconvenience due to unchecked and careless dumping of medical waste.

According to a source belonging to the medicine department of the department, certain medicines did not reach Digboi Hospital in spite of receiving the same from the district. Citing an example, the source said that 6,000 calcium capsules meant for the month of October- November sent from Tinsukia store did not reach Digboi Hospital.

Dr Saikia earlier said that he had nothing to do with the alleged anomalies. According to him, he keeps updating his superiors about the status of the hospital and its problems. Is this what the State Health Minister meant by basic and quality health services with zero tolerance to malpractices and anomalies?

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