Power failures, faulty ACs turn hospital wards into torture chambers

DHARAMSHALA: Electricity snags and a defunct air-conditioning system in Dr Rajendra Prasad Medical College (Dr RPGMC) at Tanda near here left the suffering patients with no hope of getting relief from the situation. Patients at the top floor of the hospital were the worst sufferers. With the temperature rising gradually this season here, the general wards are turning into torture chambers, due to ill-maintenance of public assets.On Friday, general wards — where repeated power failures took place — were all occupied.
Patients at the top floor of the hospital in the general ward told TOI that they had only one way of beating the heat, and that was through fans hanging from the heated ceilings, which were also not working properly. “There were repeated failures, and fans too were not working. Water coolers were also in a bad shape, and we had to rush to the ground floor to get cold water,” said Akshay Kumar, one of the attendants of a patient.
In another instance, a patient said when he was screaming with unbearable pain, his wife fainted and fell down on the floor. “For the first time in my life, I felt helpless as I was in pain due to my fracture, and my wife fainted and fell on the floor. She recovered after about an hour,” said Surjeet Kumar, a patient at the general ward on the hospital’s top floor. Dr YD Sharma, the hospital’s medical superintendent, admitted that they had received complaints, and work had been allotted to the electricity wing in the complex.
Dr RPGMC is the state’s premier hospital, and there are about 450 ACs in the hospital. But the general wards, which are used by a majority of the public, are the worst sufferers in this scorching heat. Most of the ACs are dead due to faulty design of building windows and improper care, as the attendants of patients used to throw waste on these machines, which led to their failure.