GUILHERME ALMEIDA
MARGAO
Space constraint at the 150-year-old Hospicio has come to haunt the hospital authorities again. Patients accommodated on the floor for want of beds has thrown up a question or two for the powers that be: when can citizens, and more so patients from Salcete in particular and South Goa in general, expect their ordeal to end with the government setting no firm date to commission the long-delayed 500-bedded South Goa district hospital.
When The Goan team visited the hospital, it found to its shock and surprise a number of patients accommodated on the floor for want of beds. Hospicio authorities have been struggling over the years to make good the bed shortage. Making matters worse for the hospital management this year was the declaration of the annex building, which housed the female medicine ward, leaving the officials with no option but to accommodate the patients in other wards.
While Hospicio’s official intake capacity is pegged at 250 beds, the bed capacity has now come down to around 217 after the annex building was declared unsafe by the PWD authorities. Says Hospicio Medical Superintendent Dr Ira Almeida: “We are helpless as the severe space crunch has come in the way of increasing the bed capacity. We accommodate the patients on the mats as the hospital does not send anyone home for want of beds.”
Dr Ira pointed out that the Hospicio’s bed strength has come down following shifting of the medicine ward after the building was declared unsafe. She, however, hastened to add that no patient is turned back just because the hospital is hit by bed shortage.
Doctors in private say the answer to the space crunch lies in the early commissioning of the 500-bedded district hospital which is under construction. “The problem of bed shortage will be over once the hospital is shifted to the new district hospital. The earlier the new hospital is commissioned, the better will be for the patients,” remarked a doctor.
The government has not set a firm date for the commissioning of the new hospital, which is under construction for the last eight years. While a month ago, TCP Minister Vijai Sardesai had set December 19 as the deadline to commission project, Health Minister Vishwajit Rane, who visited Hospicio exactly a week ago, had maintained that it will take minimum six months for the GSIDC to complete work on the hospital building, indicating it may not be commissioned by the end of the year.
The Health Minister and the TCP Minister are expected to review the status of the hospital project next week as Rane had told the media last week that a meeting will be called to take stock of the situation.
