John Wilbert & Rabindranath Biswas
Port Blair, Oct 28: Non-functioning of lifts in the main building of the GB Pant Hospital is causing huge inconvenience for patients, especially old, female and stretcher patients.
As per report, out of the 03 lifts, only one is functioning rest all are in defunct state since a year. As a result, the patients have to move quite a distance for scans, X-ray check-ups on the first floor to the ground floor. The other option is theramp facility at either end of the building. But women attenders of the patients find it difficult to push the patient on a stretcher which requires a couple persons to push the stretcher over such a long distance.
Another hiccup is the unavailability of sufficient number of stretchers and wheelchairs in GB Pant Hospital and which available, most of them are in pathetic condition. “It’s acute callousness on the part of the authorities not to repair the lifts which went out of order years ago,” rued the patients.
“It is a vexing problem of searching for wheelchairs and then pushing the patient on the ramp,” lamented the patient attenders. Most alarmingly, mothers who give birth to babies by caesarean have to take the risk of developing problems in stitches while taken on stretchers/wheel chairs to the ICU for feeding the new born babes as the lifts are not functioning, said the aggrieved the attenders of the patients.
However, when contacted, the officials of GB Pant Hospital said that the repair work has been stalled due to the unavailability of spare parts and which was ordered by the Directorate of Health Services.
