With lapses galore, SCB MCH sitting on Covid-19 bomb
CUTTACK: After Acharya Harihar Postgraduate Institute of Cancer(AHPGIC), the SCB Medical College and Hospital(SCB MCH) may soon become a hotspot for Covid-19 infection with an increasing number of frontline health workers and security guards of the institution being infected. While Covid-19 guidelines are being thrown to the wind at the premier Government run hospital, the authorities are not implementing standard operating procedure (SOP) while dealing with suspected Covid-19 patients at the OPDs, Casualty and Wards.
In what has sent the SCB MCH authorities into a tizzy, a person from Ganjam who had come to the MCH for a check up on Friday was tested positive for coronavirus several hours after he went round the hospital and slept inside the Rheumatology department without coming to anybody’s notice. On Saturday morning when the patient reached OPD, doctors suspecting him of having Covid-19 symptoms referred him to the isolation ward. His swab samples tested positive.
The MCH authorities screened 12 persons including doctors, hospital staff and some patients and all of them have been asked to undergo quarantine. Their swab samples will be sent for test, informed SCB MCH Superintendent Prof Ananda Pattnaik.
On Thursday, two staff nurses tested positive for Covid-19. One belongs to Gastro-Intestinal(GI) Surgery Department, the other was deployed at the isolation ward. The nurse of GI Surgery department, who required an operation, was asked to go for a random Covid-19 test and she tested positive. Around 30 staff of the department including some doctors were asked to undergo quarantine.
A few days before the incident, a patient from Ganjam district with head injury who was admitted to Neurosurgery department was later tested positive and consequently, 50 persons including five doctors, healthcare workers and some patients were kept in quarantine. Fortunately, all the swab samples in both the cases tested negative.
Apart from violation of social distancing norms, patients and their attendants do not wear masks in the absence of enforcement either by police or security personnel engaged in the hospital. Medicine and Nephrology departments are glaring examples of violations. Here, two to five attendants can be found attending a single patient without wearing masks.
“Huge numbers of patients from across the State are visiting the hospital daily. Some of them are not revealing their history while visiting the outdoor. It is only after they are found positive, these people tell us about their health condition and travel history. By then, they would have already come in contact with many others”, Prof Pattnaik said.