BJP members show disregard to Swachh Bharat mission, enter maternity ward wearing shoes

Mahabubnagar: In utter disregard to Swachh Bharat and safety of newborn babies, BJP floor leader in State Assembly G Kishan Reddy along with his entourage of district BJP leadership and followers entered the maternity ward in Mahabubnagar Government Hospital on Tuesday with shoes on. This put newborns at grave risk of contacting infection.

Kishan Reddy, on a two-day visit to the district, decided to inspect the government hospital to understand the quality of healthcare being provided here. Unfortunately, he and his followers which included BJP district president Padmaja Reddy forgot to take-off their footwear before entering the neat and clean maternity ward. Ironically, there was also a gynecologist with 22 years of government service among the group of 20-25 political visitors who were quite excited to interact with patients. All of them had their footwear on.

The group interacted with doctors and patients. They also assessed the infrastructure and facilities being offered at the hospital. After coming out of the hospital, Reddy, addressing the media, said the 650-bed hospital had only 350 beds and rest of the patients were sleeping on floor.

“Of the 21 departments in the hospital, six departments are not working. Two CT scan machines are being operated without any technicians,” he alleged and raised concerns over insufficient toilets, sheds, drinking water and basic facilities at the hospital. He said that there was no high risk centre in the hospital and that the nursing staff in the hospital was understaffed by 70 per cent and that there were only two gynecologists to perform 800 deliveries being performed in the hospital every month.

When contacted, Dr Ramkishan, Superintendent of the hospital told Telangana Today, that cost of healthcare needs were borne by Centre and State government on a 60:40 ratio and that the entire cost of trauma care centre was borne by the Centre.

Agreeing that more needs to be done to meet the increasing rush of patients at the hospital, he said out-patients in the hospital had increased from 500-600 to 1300, in-patients had increased from 100-150 to 300-350, deliveries had increased from 500 to 800 after the launch of KCR kits and after several measures were taken by the hospital administration to provide quality healthcare to patients in the hospital.

After Reddy and his entourage left the hospital, the entire maternity ward and other areas had to be cleaned and sanitised by sanitation staff of the hospital. “In the morning itself we cleaned the entire hospital. They came and stamped all over the place. We had to clean it again. It is not a problem for us to clean twice or thrice, but if something happens to newborns, our jobs will be at stake. Even patients’ attendants leave their footwear outside the ward but whenever political leaders enter our premises, our work gets doubled,” said a cleaning staff.