Tamil Nadu   

Relocation of out-patient, first aid wards irks Sathyamangalam residents

— PHOTO: M.GOVARTHAN

Inconvenience: The shifting of wards of the Sathyamangalam Government Hospital has upset residents.

SATHYAMANGALAM: Residents of Bhavani Sagar, Thalavady hills and the town are quite upset at the relocation of out-patient and first aid wards of the Government Hospital.

The two are now on the hospital premises in Komarapalayam panchayat limits, far away from the town.

Prior to the shift in June, 2008, the wards were on the hospital’s old premises, near Sathyamangalam police station.

And when the wards were in town, the public received the services to a great extent. “On an average three lakh people a year visited the two wards when they were in town,” says Stalin Sivakumar, Sathyamangalam block secretary of the Communist Party of India.

He has obtained the information under the Right to Information Act.

After the two wards got shifted, the number of persons visiting the hospital has come down.

“It is only about 100 a day.” The first of the reasons for poor patient inflow is lack of bus services, says S. Mohan Kumar, district executive committee member of the Party.

“The hospital in Komarapalayam has poor bus connectivity. This particularly affects those coming to the town from either nearby villages, Bhavani Sagar or Thalavady.

And, if they take an autorickshaw it costs Rs. 40, which is a big sum for the people.”

“The medicine at the hospital is free or very cheap but to get it the people have to pay heavily for an autorickshaw,” he adds.

Sathyamangalam residents and political parties raised the issue by submitting a petition to the Tamil Nadu Assembly Petitions’ Committee, which visited on September 26, 2008.

The Committee’s Chairman Kovai Thangam took up the matter and ordered relocation of the two wards to the town in 15 days. But then nothing much happened.

This is not the first time that that the two wards got shifted, though.

Between 1988 and 1994, for about six years, the two functioned from the Komarapalayam premises.

Then too the patient inflow was rather poor. “It was 45,000 a year for six years,” Mr. Stalin Sivakumar says. In October 1994, following public protest the hospital management shifted them to its old building near the police station. The reason cited for shifting the two wards to the Komarapalayam premises is that the old building is structurally unsound.

Mr. Mohan Kumar, however, disputes it. The second reason attributed is that doctors find it difficult to function from two campuses. Doctors in the hospital, however, say they shifted the wards to the new building in Komarapalayam following a Government Order.

The town’s residents say they want the district administration to shift the two to the old building, near the police station.

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