Srinagar, July 11: The hospitals here are in a state of crises as the lawmakers from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party-Bharaitiya Janta Party coalition are unwilling to visit the health care facilities for issuance of standing orders to overcome shortage of resources there.
Even as the number of causalities continues to rise for the past three days in Kashmir, in the aftermath of killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani, none of the lawmakers from the ruling coalition have bothered to visit the affected areas or the hospitals in the City, which are bearing the brunt of the crises. Neither the concerned ministers nor MLAs have visited any of the hospitals.
Official sources said having exhausted most of the available stocks of medicines and items like syringes, cotton, bandage and IV fluids, the hospitals have started running short of the vital stocks.
A source at the Bones and Joints hospital Barzulla said the hospital has no more syringes or cotton rolls left as the stock exhausted given the unexpected inflow of wounded. Same holds true for SMHS Hospital where over 200 wounded patients are hospitalized.
Officials said given the past precedence there were two options in such cases. There are two options: either we have to wait for the situation to improve when the medical corporation will send in the fresh stocks or we have to make interim procurement from open markets for which standing orders need to be issued, said a senior medico asking not to be identified.
He said such orders are mostly issued by minister concerned when he or she visits the hospital to take stock of situation. But what has happened this time is that the government has left the wounded and their attendants at the mercy of god.
Monday morning the situation at the B&J Hospital in the civil lines was so pathetic that area locals pooled funds to manage food for the patients and their attendants.
See these people had come hurriedly to the hospital without any proper arrangement of money or other resources and subsequently got stuck in the curfew. They have no place to go, said a doctor who personally lobbied among the Barzulla locals to collect alms for the needy patients.
They dont have money for medicines and food while discharging off any of them is again a problem as we dont have adequate ambulance facility to meet the challenging situation, said a orthopedic surgeon appealing NGOs to come forward.
This government has failed. The ministers might later come but they will do it only for photo session which will finally find place in news. We have to do something out of our own, let the NGOs and civil society come forward, said a group of medicos.
While the hospitals have declared a state of emergency and doctors struggle to provide treatment to the ever-mounting number of wounded being rushed in, the patients and their attendants have literally been left to fend for themselves.
There are over 400 wounded hospitalized, particularly in the summer capital. At SMHS Hospital here over 200 wounded are undergoing treatment whereas doctors are complaining of shortage of resources.
The government looks so apprehensive of facing people that on Sunday at a press conference its spokesman and Education Minister Naeem Akhter declined to take any questions from the media persons only to flee from the meeting hall.
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