CRYING FOR ATTENTION: Hyderabad Collector R.V. Chandravadan during a visit to the Niloufer Hospital in the city on Friday. Photo: Satish H.

HYDERABAD: Non-working incubators, failed ventilators, scarcity of antibiotics, lack of life-saving drugs and inadequate nursing staff! Problems galore at Niloufer Hospital, billed as the biggest and best Government children hospital in the State.

The 20-bed Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of the hospital has only two incubators and two ventilators. Even these don't work. Also, all the six pulsoxi-metres (used for assessing the condition of ventilated babies) are dysfunctional.

"Of course pulsoxi-metres are of no use if the ventilators are not working. But that is the sad state of facilities in the hospital," says A.P. Junior Doctors Association's Niloufer unit president Dr. G. Harikrishna. He feels chance of saving the life of one-and-half-a-year-old Rachana, who died on Wednesday night, would have been more if ventilators were available.

The girl was admitted to the Emergency Services Room, which had no ventilators. She should have been shifted to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit. This wing had six ventilators, two of which were sent for repair and two were not working. The remaining two were in use for two ailing children.

Referring to the controversy surrounding Rachana's death into which Government ordered an inquiry, Mr. Harikrishna said a similar fate awaited babies being brought to the hospital even now.

Other problems too abound in NICU. As against the required strength of six nurses per shift only two are available. Probably, that explains allegation by Rachana's mother Rajita that she had to remove the saline bottle since no nurse came forward to help. "Forget about nurses, we're forced to keep two babies in one cradle for lack of enough cradles," the APJUDA leader said.

Plight of the penniless

Even more pathetic is the plight of poor people coming to the hospital. In many cases, they are forced to buy costlier antibiotic and life-saving drugs since they are not available in the hospital. Hospital in-charge superintendent K. Prabhavati told The Hindu that equipment like warmers would be installed in a day or two. Other issues like inadequate nursing staff were brought to the notice of higher-ups already.

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