Networking sites uniting families

VARANASI: The authorities of Shri Shiv Prasad Gupta (SSPG) Divisional Hospital have started taking help of social networking sites to locate the family of unidentified patients of the hospital.
The sight of an unconscious person lying in the circulating area of the SSPG Divisional Hospital without any attendant accompanying them has become a common trend here.Many unidentified people are brought by locals for treatment here.
While some of them manage to get admitted in the hospital and some do not.
Many are not even in a position to reveal their identity.
In such cases the hospital administration claims to have started a new trend to locate the family of such people.
According to medical superintendent, Dr AK Srivastava, the staff tries its level best to locate the family members of such unidentified patients.
"We post the photos such people on social networking sites and also try to counsel these patients so that they reveal something about them," he claimed.
Giving example of a recent case, Dr Srivastava said that a person was brought by Government Railway Police (GRP) in an unconscious state recently. He was here for about a week.
Later, we contacted his family members and he returned back to his home in Unnao district on Thursday night. Similarly in another incident in September, a person whose pictures were posted on social networking sites was found to be a native of Punjab and was taken back to his home by his family.
According to Dr Srivastava, most of these patients are drunkard, drug addict and are basically from outside the city either reach the city by themselves or are left here by their own kinsmen. He said, that due to shortage of hospital staff, which often leads to hindering the medical services too, such a voluntarily initiative is a challenging task. "We also hope that social organisations and general public also help the hospital in tracing identity of such unidentified patients and unite them with their family," he said.