SrinagarJLNM Hospital, one of the oldest healthcare facilities in the state situated in Rainawari, the heart of old city, caters to a vast area of Srinagar besides other adjacent districts.
This hospital is having a 150-bed capacity and with an average OPD load of 1800 patients per day is facing various problems and government apathy is placing impediments in its smooth function.
A team from Civil Society Forum Kashmir (CSFK) which visited the hospital released its report on Monday. Here are the findings.
The hospital provides basic facilities like General Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics/Gynae, ENT,
Even high-end orthopaedics surgeries like total hip replacement, knee replacements are being routinely performed in this hospital. The cardiology department is equipped with ECHO and TMT machine and pacemaker is routinely implanted.
Ophthalmology department of this hospital has operated around 2500 patients for cataract surgery in the year 2017-18.
The minimal access surgical unit has been established in this hospital and on an average 6 patients are operated in this unit per day. Total numbers of surgeries per day is 30-35.
However, Government has failed in providing appropriate support to the hospital in terms of manpower, equipments and other resources
Sanction staff is less than 57 doctors for 150 beds. Average daily visit of OPD is 1800 with an average of 2 doctors able to give barely 3 minutes to a patient. Ophthalmology has only one consultant yet 2500 surgeries were performed in 2017-18. There is only one Laparoscopic unit for last 4 years yet 3000 surgeries were conducted in last one year.
Over 2000 deliveries (5 to 6 done every day) without any intensive care support (ICU,NICO,PICO) putting the life of mothers as well as newborn at high risk. There are no DNB courses in the hospital which leads to a highly compromised patient care after 4 PM.
Only one Orthopaedic consultant is available and postoperative care gets highly compromised due to no DNB course.
Further to our shock, it was found that there are no refrigerator and dehumidifier and medicine are not even properly stored which compromises and raises a question on the quality of the medicine.
No drug and therapeutics committee in place in the hospital, no hospital formulary, No SOPS for drug procurement, storage and distribution.
No drug sales counter for OPD patients. Pharmacist Incharge of the main store has never undergone training in a drug store and distribution practices during 22 years of his career. Both OPD and IPD drug store closes at 04:00 pm.
All free drugs are not available as the supply of drugs is awaited from JKMSCL. The emergency medicines are made available to the patients from other hospital resources. The lifts installed in the IPD block have not been handed over to the hospital authority by the executing authority JKPCC
Keeping in view the workload there is a scarcity of doctors and paramedical staff in this Hospital.
CSFK has vowed to further take up all the issues facing JLNM Hospital with the health minister of the J&K state and other concerned authorities.
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