This story is from October 28, 2017

Hospitals reel under patient pressure

At the Beliaghata ID Hospital on Friday afternoon, doctors in the emergency and OPD were struggling to manage patients. A long queue outside was getting restless even as doctors kept checking patients one after another.
Hospitals reel under patient pressure
The long queue at BC Roy Memorial Hospital for Children on Friday
KOLKATA: At the Beliaghata ID Hospital on Friday afternoon, doctors in the emergency and OPD were struggling to manage patients. A long queue outside was getting restless even as doctors kept checking patients one after another.
“At this hospital we are operating at just a one-fourth strength of doctors. In the past few weeks, the number of patients at emergency and outdoor has increased.
But we have fallen short of meeting expectations, even with our best of efforts,” said a doctor while attending to a patient. As he spoke, another patient suffering from high fever was brought inside the emergency ward and his family members started pleading for immediate attention. Hours earlier, a patient had died while waiting in queue.
On Friday, of the 565 patients admitted at the Beliaghata ID hospital, more than 230 were being treated for complications related to fever. According to health department sources, more than 100 of them are suffering from dengue.
There are around 14 medical teaching institutes in the state, of which ID hospital is not under MCI’s purview at present. If the hospital had been under MCI’s purview, the deficiency of doctors would never have excee-ded 15%. “But at ID we have a deficiency of 74%. Similarly, deficiency of the nursing staff is nearly 60%,” said a doctor there.
PACKED TO CAPACITY

'It is more of a panic reaction that we are witnessing,” said a doctor at BC Roy Memorial Hospital for Children. “In many cases, the patients can get treated locally. But after the spread of the disease, there is fear all around.” Mantasa Khatun, 8, was admitted with high fever at BC Roy on Wednesday. She had been running a temperature for the past two days but is yet to be found dengue positive. “She was admitted at the Beliaghata ID hospital for a day and then referred to this hospital,” said her aunt Nur Husseina Bibi.
On Friday, the patients’ relatives at both BC Roy and ID hospitals continued to complain about the long queue and waiting time at the emergency and out-patient departments. But doctors said they were doing their best to manage the crowd. “Each day we are getting around 2,000 patients at the emergency and OPD. If doctors spend even 10 minutes on an average with each patient, imagine the hours that are needed every day,” reasoned a doctor at ID hospital.
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