Healthcare woes hit new Malkangiri district headquarters hospital

Malkangiri: Public resentment continues to grow at the newly inaugurated headquarters hospital in Malkangiri in the absence of adequate number of staff and proper infrastructure.

The new hospital which was inaugurated by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik a couple of months back is yet to run with full fledged capacity.

Be it the number of doctors or nursing staff or the number of beds, the hospital lacks facilities in every aspect giving a hard time to patients and their relatives.

“The 7-storey building might seem big and modern from outside but it is worse than the old district headquarters hospital in terms of healthcare facilities,” Sonu, a local resident said.

According to sources, patients at ICU have been adversely affected due to lack of oxygen cylinders.

While the hospital has currently 125 beds, about 240 to 250 patients are being accommodated in the hospital every day. Despite being inaugurated 4 months ago, the hospital is still undergoing minor developments in fire safety and other allied facilities.

“Patients are forced to seek better treatment at other hospitals due to unavailability of good facilities which is unfortunate,”another local resident Munna Khadual said.

On the other hand, the ADMO has accepted the charges of growing public discontent over lack of facilities in the hospital and assured to take steps in this regard.

“All the staffs who were working at the old district headquarters hospital have been engaged in the new hospital but due to in-house transfer, the number of  nursing staff fell short of the requirement. So we have released an advertisement for appointment of 30 new nurses in the hospital,” said ADMO Anil Kumar Mishra.