Rourkela: The Rourkela Government Hospital (RGH) is battling a major crisis of shortage of doctors, equipment, administrative staff and skilled manpower. Despite having a blood bank, the hospital faces a blood crisis when it comes to quantity.
Rourkela is an accident prone city where an average three cases of accidents come to the government hospital everyday. Despite the fact that most of the patients suffer head injury, there is no CT scan machine nor a neurologist in the hospital. Doctors refer to nearest government hospital (Burla) which is 190 km away. The hospital also lacks major services and facilities like ICU, coronary care unit (CCU), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultra sound and dialysis.
The hospital has 400 beds whereas the requirement is 700. As far as blood bank is concerned, the hospital requires more than 20,000 units of blood whereas 14,656 blood units were collected last year. Out of this, 7000 were collected from camp collection.
The hospital lacks in specialist and super specialist doctors. It is unfortunate that there is not even a single neurologist, cardiologist, paediatric, heart and kidney specialist and many more. A hospital of this scale where more than 3,00,000 people come for treatment, that too many from Jharkhand has a poor patient/doctor ratio.
The administration is also chaotic as the posts of director, superintendent and deputy superintendent are neither permanent nor fixed. Most posts are vacant for a long time.
Director in-charge Dr Sudha Rai Pradhan, talking to OrissaPOST said, “There is indeed a shortage of everything. We have written to the government and are expecting new officials from next week. Our hospital is in need of an upgradation and revival.”
“Lack of everything in a government hospital is leaving us with no option but to go to private hospitals which turns out to be an expensive affair. It is sad that the only government hospital in Rourkela is going through such a terrible condition. Most of the doctors refer patients to Burla which is very far from here,” said Ashesh Boral, a patient’s attendant.”
Santosh Biswal from Smile Foundation said, “If the hospital is facing budgetary issue, our foundation is ready to take the initiative to crowdfund for a CT scan machine because that is the need of the hour.”