Jahangeer Ganaie
Anantnag, Jan 4: The Maternity and Child Care Hospital (MCCH) in Anantnag town catering patients from all the four districts of the South Kashmir besides patients from Ramban and Chenab valley continues to function from an unsafe building.
Located in a congested Sherbagh locality the hospital also faces the space crunch with hospital authorities placing beds in the corridors to accommodate the huge influx of patients coming from length and breadth of south Kashmir and other regions.
Officials said that more than 100 patients remain admitted in labour and surgical wards of the facility every night besides that thousands of patients visit the hospital OPD every day for examination.
They said that for such a huge rush, you have just a few two labour wards and four surgical wards besides the operation theatre.
Multiple patients occupy a single bed, hospital is overcrowded and noisy while people usually jostle each other to move in the hospital, they said
Officials said that the building in which MCCH is functioning at present has been already declared unsafe by the Fire and Services department around a decade before.
After the building was declared unsafe, the government planned to shift the hospital to a district hospital, however, political influence forced authorities to revoke the order within 24 hours, they added.
Before six years, government decided to shift the hospital to Rehmat e Alam building (a building of trust) in Sarnal area of the town, however, even after elapsing of six years, hospital continues to work from unsafe building facing space crunch besides other problems.
They said that this hospital gets more than 50,000 patients in the Out-Patient Department (OPD) and about 10,000 indoor patients on a monthly basis.
The shifting of the MCCH to Rehmati Alam Hospital constructed at the cost of Rs 13 crore by JKPCC was put on hold after the IIT Jammu declared already existing first two floors of the building unsafe following which the GMC Anantnag authorities proposed another 200 bedded hospital building at the same site.
Officials working in the hospital when contacted said that shifting of hospital is not in their domain, however, they acknowledged that patients suffer here as the hospital is facing a space crunch.
They said that everyday thousands of patients from far off places of South Kashmir and even Jammu division visit here who are being managed here despite challenges.
They said that due to unsafe buildings they are unable to spend anything here which would enhance facilities here as we know building is unsafe and spending anything on unsafe building will be a futile exercise.
They said that higher ups have been informed several times about the issues and hopefully, the hospital will be shifted soon.
Meanwhile, Principal GMC Anantnag Dr Tariq Qureshi said that once block B of GMC hospital in Janglat mandi Anantnag will be completed, it will be shifted there.
He said that internal work of the building is going on and the hospital will be shifted as soon as internal work gets completed.
