Ailing Infrastructure at Gandhi Hospital is failing patients

Despite being reputed as a top tertiary health care facility, the Gandhi hospital continues to struggle in providing basic amenities for patients and visitors, such as clean drinking water, well-maintained toilets, working lifts, general cleanliness and sanitation, adequate waiting areas for attenders and reliable security personnel

Hyderabad: Gandhi Medical College and Hospital in Secunderabad is widely regarded as the premier State-run health care institution in Telangana State, renowned for its legacy and experienced teaching and clinical faculty. Yet, the State government struggles to ensure that neither the patients nor medical students have access to proper basic amenities.

Despite being reputed as a top tertiary health care facility, the hospital continues to struggle in providing basic amenities for patients and visitors, such as clean drinking water, well-maintained toilets, working lifts, general cleanliness and sanitation, adequate waiting areas for attenders and reliable security personnel.

“If anyone wants to understand how Gandhi Hospital treats its patients, they should simply walk into the toilets in the hospital’s outpatient wing, which is a traumatic experience. The in-patient toilets were recently redeveloped, but they are closed on all the seven floors,” says P Krishna, a daily wager who had brought his pregnant wife to the hospital’s MCH centre from Marriguda, near Nalgonda.

In the Gandhi Medical College (GMC) building, all the hospital lifts are defunct. A flimsy rope has been tied to ensure students do not accidentally fall into the empty lift pit. There is no proper signage to alert medical students and visitors about the non-availability of lifts. While students are accustomed to this inconvenience, visitors must exercise extreme caution.

At the nearby main Gandhi hospital building, where patients in all specialties recover in the ICUs and wards, Construction and Debris waste (C&D) has been dumped within the premises, creating an unbearable stench. The lifts in this building are notorious for failing suddenly, as experienced just a few days ago. The washrooms in the main building are locked, denying access to visitors, patients and caregivers.

“Such difficulties in sanitation/ amenities are deep rooted in Government hospitals. The only way to address them is to ensure dedicated funds for hospital amenities and maintenance and encourage hospital management to spend more on such issues. Associations representing junior and senior doctors often fail to raise these concerns while patients and their caregivers are typically unable to demand improvements,” says a senior public health official in Hyderabad, on condition of anonymity.

Senior health officials from Gandhi Hospital, however, have maintained that all possible measures are being taken to improve facilities. “The hospital and the medical college itself are in a huge campus. We are systematically addressing each and every issue and it takes some time to resolve all of them. I am sure the hospital will be able to provide a better experience to patients in the coming months,” senior officials said.