Hyped to provide relief to the overburdened PGIs Emergency Wing,the Advanced Trauma Centre,is now struggling to become fully functional due to paucity of staff. This,said insiders,is owing to the absence of a regular director who could take up the matter with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare,which governs the hospital. Sources in the hospital say that presently the ATC is only functioning with one-third of the required manpower to run such a huge setup. However,the matter of creation of more posts is hanging in balance as the matter would first require approval from the Standing Finance Committee (SFC) of the institute before taking it up with the ministry. Sources said that the matter is yet to be taken to the SFC meeting. Against a demand of 300 nursing staff,presently there are only 76 sanctioned posts. Similarly,the required number for sanitation staff and other paramedical staff is 200,while the sanctioned number is about 50. In addition,there is no lift operator,no security officer and no administrative officer in the ATC and the presently staff has been pooled from other departments. The staff lift has not been made operational for the doctors. As of now,there are about 30 patients admitted for orthopaedics and about 14 for neurology besides half a dozen in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Also,the problems pertaining to the poor workmanship in the building are far from over. Despite repeated reminders to the CPWD,little has been done to address the problems such as chipped stairs,chipped flooring in the Operation Theatres etc. Insiders said that PGIs own engineering department takes little interest in keeping a check saying that the entire work was commissioned to an outside agency. A senior doctor of the hospital on conditions of anonymity,said,Our repeated requests to the PGI engineering department officials to check CPWD workmanship and point out the flaws to us as we,as doctors are not able to pin point,have fallen on deaf ears. As of now,out of the five operation theatres at the centre,only two have been made functional so far. Sources in the hospital said that so far only the department of orthopaedics is using the Operation Theatre for emergency and trauma cases. When contacted PGIs official spokesperson Manju Wadwalkar,said,The CPWD is yet to hand over the building to the PGI authorities. Once the building is handed over,only then it can be made fully functional and more staff could be added as per the needs of the patients.
