Medical services and valuable and expensive medical machines at Barisal General Hospital have been put to risk as repairs of the hospital building remain suspended due to an alleged feud.
This correspondent found that the old building of the hospital, which was established in 1912 using public donations, had been in a depleted condition where the ceiling plaster had fallen off in many places and rain water regularly percolated into the rooms, posing great risks to medical equipments.
While talking to the staff of the hospital, it was learnt that the repairs of the building had remained suspended due to a feud between the health engineering department and the public works department (PWD).
Sources at the hospital said administrative building, outdoor building, operation theaters, toilets, diarrhea section and the X-ray department building was in poor shape and rain water regularly pours into the rooms during the monsoon.
Due to this severe condition of the building, female medicine ward has already been transferred to another portion of the building.
Altaf Hossain, a patient admitted at the male surgery ward of the hospital, alleged the toilet and bathroom of the ward became unusable due to the broken water connections.
Dr Delwar Hossain, resident medical officer of the hospital, acknowledging the facts said: “We appealed many times to the public works department for repairing the hospital building on emergency basis. A letter was also sent to PWD on May 2014, but they have not yet started the repair works.”
Nur Hossain, ward master of the hospital, said the drainage, sewerage and sanitation systems of the hospital were in dire states as the building was more than 100-years old.
Another source at the hospital said Barisal General Hospital was recently upgraded to a 250-bed hospital, but the upgrade was yet to be implemented.
Acknowledging the problem, PWD Barisal Office Executive Engineer Zakir Hossain said the responsibility of repairing the hospitals up to 250-bed belonged to health engineering department and therefore, PWD cannot take any step in this regard.
Barisal Health Engineering Department Executive Engineer FM Murshid said Barisal General Hospital was part of the Barisal Sher-E-Bangla Medical College Hospital and PWD was responsible for its maintenance.
SBMCH Director Dr Qamrul Islam said the hospital authority was well aware of the current situation at Barisal General Hospital and the PWD had earlier conducted some repair works at Barisal General Hospital as part of SBMCH.
