Sick beyond imagination

Rubbish remained littered around the dustbin in front of the CMCH and serious patients waiting in front of lift is a common scene . -Photo: Star

It's sick beyond imagination. From the ground floor up to the fifth floor it's inlaid with layers of thick dust and spittle. The big staircase in the middle of this huge building, and one each on its east and west flanks are all like highways to hell.

The blood donors, drug addicts, afflicted, thieves and the social misfits have all long ago taken the CMCH premises as their natural asylum. They sit on the steps, perch on the railings, squat before the operation theater (OT), lie before the emergency wards, set a makeshift kitchen along the corridors, and sometimes start a family at the more remote corners of the building.

All these uprooted refugees have turned the CMCH into a slum, and from the moment you step onto the ground floor the familiar stench of the slum will hit your nose. Such uncleanness should never be tolerated, no not by the ready excuse of Bangladesh being a poor country, etc., etc.

Let all the sweepers and the cleaners be sacked en bloc over it, let the principal of the college resign over it, let the health director resign over it, let the health minister resign over it too, yet the present condition of the CMCH should not be allowed to continue.

Go to the general ward and the gyne ward horrible just in one word. The toilets are full of human faces, unflushed. Why should the toilet cleaners be paid then! What happens to the patients then! The wards are crowded with poor people who do not complain about the unhygienic conditions they live in. As if they are fated to suffer.

The hospital diagnoses and prescribes, but the medicine has to be bought by the patients. The normal practice is that the hospital staff regularly steals the medicine bought for the patients by their relatives. They sell it back to the patients. Why should this staff be not discharged at once! Who stops the authorities from doing it?

Go to the third floor, where the main OT is. Oh! You'll just shed your tears. How can it be that bad! Peep inside the OT room, you'll be surprised to see how very outdated and outmoded instruments are used for all kinds of operations. Half of the OT ward is dark or ill lighted, and the rest half is nearly abandoned, and you might get the impression that here patients are treated as guinea-pigs.

The injury ward and the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) probably have got some semblance of sanity. The Intensive Care Unit is clean, services are prompt, beds are well arranged, and the entrance is restricted. Probably the equipment are also reliable.

If a hospital as large as CMCH is not taken care of well, then it should be adjudged as a crime against humanity, and the authorities concerned must immediately do an overhauling act. Even, if possible, by tomorrow.