BANGALORE: Minister for Health and Family Welfare R. Ashok paid a surprise visit to the Government-run Bowring and Lady Curzon, K.C. General and Victoria hospitals in the city in the early hours of Tuesday.

The Minister shook the doctors and paramedical staff from their slumber and warned them of disciplinary action if they failed to provide patients timely medical treatment.

Mr. Ashok told presspersons in the afternoon that he found Prasanna Kumar, a duty doctor in Bowring Hospital, sleeping when he visited the casualty ward around 2 a.m. while six road accident victims in serious condition with bleeding injuries and fractures were crying for treatment and help.

The Minister said he saw doctors in K.C. General Hospital giving prescriptions asking patients to buy medicines from outside even though there was sufficient stock of medicines in the hospital.

Upset over the attitude of doctors and paramedical staff in these two hospitals, the Minister said he had ordered an inquiry against the personnel concerned.

He said he had kept under suspension Dr. Prasanna Kumar, pending inquiry and notices had been served on them for dereliction of duty.

Mr. Ashok said he was shocked to know that the hospital superintendents did not buy life saving drugs even though they had sufficient funds.

Before becoming a Minister, Mr. Ashok said that he had believed in the words of doctors that the hospitals lacked funds. But he now realised that funds meant for buying drugs were not being utilised by the heads of hospitals. But the boards of visitors of some of the hospitals, which had the powers to sanction funds for the purpose, had failed to do so. The boards had not met for a long time affecting the smooth functioning of the hospitals. The Minister said that some postgraduate students and nurses were attending to accident victims while the doctor was sleeping.

Telephone dead

The only telephone for the major hospital was out of order for many days. He had made a spot order for installing another landline connection for the hospital.

The K.C. General Hospital had Rs. 3 crore users' money while the Bowring & Lady Curzon and Victoria Rs. 2 crore and Rs. 1 crore respectively. The K.C. General Hospital was functioning without an operation theatre for four months and the equipment had not been repaired.

He said he had ordered reconstitution of board of visitors to revamp the administration in all the hospitals.

These boards, he said, will meet every month and decide on the needs of the patients.

Asked how could he inspect hospitals coming under the Department of Medical Education, he said he had taken the permission of Minister V.S. Acharya.

Mr. Ashok said all government hospitals in the State had been given six months time to improve hygiene, availability of medicines and exhibiting their names and quantity and courteous behaviour on the part of doctors and other personnel towards patients.

He said he was holding a meeting of district health officers on streamlining of administration. The committees comprising senior officers will pay surprise visits to all hospitals, including district hospitals, every month.

Budgetary sanction

Asked how could the hospitals render quality service when there was a shortage of personnel, the Minister said he was getting budgetary sanction for recruiting 620 doctors and more than 2,000 technical staff and acquiring scanning and x-ray equipment.

He had approved recommendations made by the Lokayukta against officers found guilty in the investigation and they would be placed before the Cabinet for its approval.

No file sent to him by the Lokayukta on corrupt and inefficient officers will be delayed, he said.

Action will be taken against those doctors who remained absent for years and were found working elsewhere or abroad affecting the patients.

He said he would look into the problems faced by the laboratory in the Department of Forensic Science of the Victoria Hospital in conducting postmortem examinations in accident, murder, and suicide cases.

The paramedical staff there faced the danger of contracting HIV and jaundice while dissecting the bodies for tests.

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