Low on facilities, F’bad civil hospital caters to 2,000 daily

Bijendra Ahlawat
Tribune News Service
Faridabad, November 28

The Badshah Khan civil hospital here, which is attending to over 2,200 patients in its OPD daily, has been a victim of inadequate infrastructure. 

Inaugurated in 2006, the plaster of building has started withering due to poor maintenance. The plaster has come off at several points, walls show signs of dampness and rusted windows expose the claims of maintenance. 

Issues like cleanliness, parking space, regular breakdown of the lift and shortage of staff, including doctors, nurses and paramedics, and shortage of medicines continues to hamper the functioning of the hospital.

The waiting hall of the OPD has not been made air-conditioned as was promised at the time of inauguration.

The casualty ward of the hospital seems to be critically sick itself as it has no trained (MBBS) doctor most of the time. Against the requirement of six doctors, the section has one or two doctors at the most, resulting in severe inconvenience to patients.

Against the sanctioned strength of 55 doctors, the hospital has 40 doctors of whom many of them are busy with official duties, training or court work. Patients are attended to by non-specialists many times. 

Regular transfer and failure to appoint or depute more doctors to meet the increased workload has led to a crisis. Posts like radiologist and pathologist have been vacant for the past many years. 

The hospital is dependent on just 21 staff nurses against the sanctioned 90 posts. The number of lab technicians and pharmacist is also well short of requirement.

The hospital regularly faces a shortage of medicines and even basic items like bandage many times. Bandage, cotton, Betadine, glucose (DNS), gloves and masks are either missing or in short supply, forcing attendants of patients to procure those from outside.

Out of the 469 type of medicines listed in the Essential Drug List (EDL), the hospital has only 212 at any time. The shortage of anti-rabies vaccine and Anti-D injection is a common occurrence.

While the cleanliness work has been outsourced, the hospital administration is not authorised to carry out repairs worth more than Rs 10,000 at a time. It has to submit a requisition to the authorities for major repairs. As there is no organised parking, vehicles are parked in a haphazard manner outside the hospital.