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Minister conducts surprise inspection at General Hospital

Staff Reporter

Hospital Development Committee to be reconstituted

TAKING ACTION: Health Minister P.K. Sreemathy at the General Hospital in Kochi during a surprise inspection on Friday. Photo: Vipinchandran

KOCHI: Health Minister P.K. Sreemathy has said that the daily cleaning at the District General Hospital here should be done by 8 a.m., before the doctors go on rounds at the wards.

During a surprise inspection on Friday, she found that cleaning work was being done even as the doctors were checking on the in-patients at the hospital.

Speaking to presspersons, Mrs. Sreemathy, said that the hospital would soon have a development committee, which had not been reconstituted over a year now. In spite of a Government order soon after dissolving the previous Hospital Development Committee, the hospital activities were being run by an ad hoc committee.

The District Collector, who is also the chairman the Committee, said that there was little response from some of the political parties to whom reminders were sent regarding reconstitution of the Committee. The Committee has nominees from major political parties and includes the sitting MLAs, MP and the nursing superintendent as the members. The hospital superintendent is the secretary of the Committee.

According to a member of the previous Committee, problems of not having a full-fledged Committee were evident recently when a patient was assaulted by the canteen employees and when a doctor was manhandled by a patient's bystander.

Junaid Rehman, Resident Medical Officer (RMO), said that while the Minister had pointed out that cleaning needed to be done early, the hospital would have to find some other ways to get the work done, since regular cleaners would refuse to work beyond a time schedule. Only the contract workers could be asked to take up cleaning earlier. Nursing assistants, who would be on duty at night and through early morning, could not be asked to take up cleaning work, he said.

The Minister visited different wards and found space constraints in the Oncology surgical wards, where patients double the capacity of the ward were admitted. The RMO pointed out the need for more space to create wards. Since the treatment facilities in the hospital increased with installing a radiation unit, the number of patients here had gone up, he said.

Dr. Rehman said that three more equipment for treatment of cancers would be installed at the hospital at a cost of Rs.2.75 crores through a Union Government aid.

One more cobalt therapy unit would be set up and two machines related to radiation treatment — brackey therapy and treatment planning system — were being imported from Amsterdam, he said.

Mrs. Sreemathy was also apprised of the lack of medical officers in the hospital besides the need of certain equipment in the Neurosurgery department.

The Minister was happy about the facilities being extended at the Regional Diagnostic Centre.

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