Shortage of medicines ails Civil Hospital

Ravi Chandel

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, April 25

The state government may have claimed that they are providing free medicines to the patients visiting the Civil Hospital, but the fact is otherwise.

Patients visiting the Bhai Mani Singh Civil Hospital have to return without medicines as the hospital has been reeling under an acute shortage of medicines for the last one month.

The civil hospital has been facing shortage of life-saving drugs, antibiotics and anti-allergic medicines. Besides, the anaesthetic drug Lignocaine injection, (local anaesthetic) has been out of the stock for the last six months.

Pleading anonymity, a hospital employee said, “We have sent a list of 50 medicines to the higher authorities, but we have not received any response from them. However, we always ensure that life-saving drugs are available at the emergency ward of the hospital.”

Apart from this, in this month they have not received any fund from the National Health Mission (NHM) to smoothly conduct the available diagnostics tests at the civil hospital. However, the condition of the Mother and Child hospital located on the premises of the civil hospital is slightly better than this. If they do not get the required stock of medicines from the civil surgeon medical store then they purchase the same under Janani Suraksha Yojna (JSY) running under NHM.

On the other hand, Kamal, Drug ware house in-charge, claimed that they have sufficient stock of anti-allergic, antibiotics and life-saving drugs in the store.

When contacted, Sukhjinder Singh Gill, SMO, civil hospital, confirmed that they are reeling under shortage of medicines.

He further stated that they have sent letters to the Civil Surgeon regarding the shortage of medicines in the hospital, but in vain.

Gill, said, “As per the guidelines of the health department we cannot directly contact the drug ware house in-charge to provide us the essential medicines. We can only send letters for the required medicines to the civil surgeon. Further, they have to provide us the medicines.”

Civil Surgeon Hari Narayan Singh refused to comment on the issue of shortage of medicines. He said, “I have not checked the records yet so I cannot say anything whether the SMOs concerned have sent the list of shortage medicines to my office or not.”