VIVEK SHARMA
JAMMU: Mere making tall claims or displaying plaques do not make institutions. These are made of a vision by those having will and sincerity of purpose to serve the society. The plaque of Minister for Health and Medical Education Taj Mohi-ud-Din outside Neurology Department mocks at the grandeur and efficacy of the so-called Super Specialty Hospital, which successive Congress ministers have been claiming and comparing with All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Parroting anthem in praise of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh for ensuring ‘liberal funds’ to realise the dream the Coalition Government(s) have ‘blessed’ Jammuites with a liability which will keep them haunting for long.
Shifting of a few departments of the Government Medical College Hospital to the Super-Specialty are proving nightmare for the patients, who are left to fend for themselves, especially on holidays.
After braving the denial of food on Monday due to refusal by the catering agency for unknown reasons, the patients had yet another shock to undergo when the normal supplies like Natural Saline (NS), adhesive rolls or cotton were not available on Tuesday, being the holiday on account of Moharram. The stock reply of the helpless nursing staff remained that they had no supplies as the storekeeper was availing the holiday. A patient and his impatient attendant created laughter in the otherwise grim hospital scenario by commenting that “ailments too should have been given off by the Super-Specialty management.”
They were agitated over not finding the men at the helm available to let them know why supplies remained suspended for the whole day. Even few drops of saline for administering injections were not available with the nursing staff, making patients to beg the visitors to help them to get NS from the market.
A visitor calling on a patient, hailing from Srinagar told STATE TIMES that though the government hospitals were proving a burden on the tax-payer, the condition of the Srinagar hospitals was not as dismal as in Jammu. He wondered how an institution of such a profile can remain without basic minimum supplies like NS, cotton or adhesive rolls.
The Super Specialty Hospital has assumed notoriety for more than one reason. In a shocking act of alleged corruption under the Private Public Partnership (PPP), the Modular Chimneys along with latest kitchen gadgets in the pantry block of the high profile Hospital was dismantled at the behest of Taj Mohi-ud-Din.
The ‘visionary initiative’ of the controversial minister cost the ex-chequer over Rs 1 Crore. But who bothers?
The brazen destruction of the public property enraged the doctors’ fraternity so severely that the then Medical Superintendent Super Specialty Hospital Dr Reyaz Ahmed had to file a case in the court seeking CBI probe into the misdeeds of the Health Minister on whose instance the destruction to the public property had been caused.
In another act of playing with the rules, the Minister for Health and Medical Education closed down the Neurology Department–one of the six departments at the SSH to set up Gastroenterology Department, to favour a blue eyed doctor and sideline his counterpart.
Initially, the OPD services for 6 departments were shifted from the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMC&H) to Super Specialty Hospital, including Cardiology, Cardio Thoracic and Vascular Surgery, Neurology, Neuro Surgery, Nephrology and Urology.
However to favour his blue eyed doctor, the minister shifted Gastroenterology department to SSH and directed to the Neurology doctor Dr B R Kundal to shift back his department at GMC.
Ironically, the political executives had declared that the medicare services in the six disciplines at new SSH Hospital will be at par with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). However, the prevailing scenario mocks at those claims.
The construction work on the 200 bedded Super Specialty Hospital, an extended part of the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMC&H), was started way back in 2006 at an estimated cost of Rs 120 crore.