Niramay Centre of Sishu Bhawan running from garage
Cuttack, Dec 8: Acute shortage of accommodation has hit infants’ healthcare service hard at the 416-bed Sishu Bhawan which attracts patients across the State.
Due to lack of proper accommodation, 3 years back, authorities of the hospital had opened the Niramaya center on temporary basis in the garage built by Roads & Building Department near the OPD for parking of doctors’ vehicles.
Further, the Niaramaya center of the hospital has been functioning with a single counter from the same garage since 2015.
To avail free medicine for their ailing infants, parents, guardians and attendants irrespective of gender have to make line on a single queue as a result of which untoward incidents are often occurring following hassles due to excess rush.
Besides, lack of adequate space at both inside and outside of the Niramaya center is causing problems and difficulties in respect of stocking medicines and making queue before the single counter to avail medicines. Often the long queue is stretching up to the road passing through the hospital.
Notably, the Odisha government’s flagship Niramaya programme was introduced here to offer free medicines to infants suffering from different diseases.
Again, parents and attendants have also expressed resentment over non-availability of some paediatric medicines at the Niramay counter as a result of which they are being forced to buy the same from outside.
According to sources, out of total 318 items of medicines supplied to Sishu Bhawan by Odisha State Medical Corporation Limited(OSMCL) under Niramaya scheme, the hospital at present has the stock for 226 varieties of medicine.
Sishu Bhawan Superintendent Prof. Saroj Satapathy who conceded the problems and difficulties in functioning of the Niramaya center from garage on temporary basis, however, told that effort is on to shift the Niramay center very soon to the extended building of the existing center the construction work of which is at the completion stage.
