Valley’s top hospital lacks basic infrastructure

In 2008,the hospital admitted 748058 patients including 42708 in its In patient Department (IPD),an increase of 102776 patients from 645282 patients in 2007. But the number of hospital beds remained stagnant at 760. As a result the patients have to share beds especially in the Casualty ward which has only 70 beds. On an average,the hospital admits 206 patients to the Casualty ward every day.

A new building for the Casualty ward has been under-construction for nearly two years. Though one part of the building has been completed,the work on the other is going on at snail’s pace.

The hospital is short of many testing machines. The hospital has only one dialysis machine and the surgical ICCU has only two ventilators.

“We need at least 20 – 30 ventilators and 3 – 4 dialysis machines,” said a doctor who works as a Registrar in SMHS. “The equipment that we have in the surgical and medical ICU is primitive. Even the trolleys and wheelchairs are primitive and uncomfortable for the patients”.

The machines that are available are overworked. According to the hospital records,the hospital’s lone CT scan machine performs 40 scans every day. The lone MRI machine on an average does 10 MRI tests daily. “Recently,the machine did 18 MRI’s in one day and nearly two dozen on another day. That’s far more than it can handle. As a result quality suffers which also creates problems for the doctors in diagnosing the disease correctly.

At AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences,Delhi),the MRI machines on an average do only 4-5 MRI’s a day,” a doctor said.

The hospital has only three X-ray machines which have to do 300 x-rays daily. The two ultrasonography machines conduct 50-80 tests everyday “Instead of getting more machines,these few machines are overworked.

And when they break down they lie without repair for months,” the doctor said. “The Upper GI Endoscope is lying defunct for six months while a Nasal Endoscope has been out of order for nearly a year. The Colonoscopy machine is non-functional for nearly one and a half years”.

Despite overworking the machines,patients have to wait nearly a week for their turn. “They have told me to come after nine days,” Mohammad Ashraf Malik,45,a patient waiting to get operated in the hospital,shows the date on his card.

And for Dar,a father of four young daughters,and his wife nine days is a long wait. On the other hand,the laboratory tests done by the hospital have decreased over the years even as the number of patients being admitted to the hospital has increased.

The Pathology lab of the hospital conducted 46568 tests during 2005 including 18450 CBC with ESR tests,8170 BT CT HB tests and 214 Bone Marrow with PBF. In 2007,the number of tests decreased to 43,963 including 17470 CBC with ESR tests and 173 Bone Marrow with PBF tests.

Similarly,the Biochemistry Lab (F-Block SMHS) and the Emergency lab conducted 45,487 tests in October 2007 while in April 2008,the number of tests done in these labs declined to 36,438.

So why have the number of tests decreased? “It is about money. The machine tests generate revenue. Besides,the technicians also get their palms greased. On the other hand,there is not much money in lab tests,” the administrative official said.

A number of private diagnostic centres have mushroomed around the hospital where both doctors and para medics practice. The patients are thus regularly asked to get the tests done privately at specific labs.

The official also said that the technicians in the labs give out of turn appointments for the tests to their relatives and friends and to other people for a commission. “This is happening because there is no proper system in place to monitor their functioning,” the doctor said.

The Medical Superintendent of SMHS Hospital,Dr Waseem Querishi admitted that the hospital lacks infrastructure. He,however,said the administration is doing its best to upgrade it. “The new Casualty Ward with about 80 beds will be completed by April this year. “The machines that are not working now will soon be repaired or replaced”.

Dr Querishi said a new 400-beded super-specialty Institute of Traumatology and Allied Specialties that is coming up will solve the problem of lack of infrastructure “to a great degree”.

“We will put a new MRI,a new CT Scan machine and other latest machines at the new institute,” Dr Querishi said.