A visit to the city’s prestigious Safdarjung hospital has revealed its sorry state of affairs. The patients, suffering from serious diseases like dengue, are most unlikely to get a bed at the hospital. The situation is worse in children’s ward, where three patients share one bed as the hospital faces severe shortage of infrastructure.
‘My child was suffering from dengue. I asked the doctors at the hospital to give a separate bed to my boy. But the doctors asked me to adjust or leave. He has been sharing a bed with two other patients for past ten days. What if he catches any more diseases, who will be responsible for that’, asked Poonam Gupta.
Left with not many choices, the poor patients and their family members are at the mercy of the hospital administration and have to often ‘adjust’ with conditions.
‘Who would like to see their children lying in such condition, but we can’t afford a private hospital. It is so unhygienic and scary, but we don’t have a choice’, said the mother of a 17-year-old boy who is admitted at Safardjung hospital.
Meanwhile, the doctors at the hospital have argued that they are more concerned about saving lives of the patients than about the conditions.
‘It is more important to save a patient’s life. We can’t deny any patient a bed owing to a Supreme Court’s ruling’, said Rajpal, medical superintendent at Safdarjung Hospital, while adding that the authorities will soon take steps to improve the sorry state of affairs.