Women with newborns jostle for space

BARIPADA:  Newborns and their mothers jostling for space at the newborn baby ward in the district headquarters hospital is a regular sight. On Sunday morning, the newborn baby of Snehalata Majhi of Raghunathpur village in the district was seen lying on the floor although it was diagnosed to be suffering from breathing problems and cough. All the beds in the ICU were occupied with babies with other complications. Not only Snehalata, but many other parents wait to shift their newborns to the ICU which only has 10 beds.Poor people in this tribal-dominated district are forced to keep their babies in inhospitable conditions as they can neither shift their children to private clinics nor the SCB Medical at Cuttack due to financial constraints. “More than 20 children are treated here and due to lack of beds, they are forced to lie in a critical condition on the hospital verandah. The problems aggravate when more pregnant women are admitted and deliver babies with complications,” said a social activist Bibekananda Pattnaik. Even as locals have been demanding an increase in the number of beds in the district headquarters hospital and ICU, no action has been taken yet. They said patients from all the 26 blocks of the district besides parts of West Bengal and Jharkhand depend on the hospital. However, poor infrastructure has affected health services here. A nurse, requesting anonymity, said they have to adjust many children in the ICU and many-a-time, unhygienic conditions have led to death of some newborns. Apart from lack of infrastructure, the hospital does not have adequate number of staff. Several posts of doctor in Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Paediatric and Orthopaedic departments are lying vacant besides the nurses. The hospital authorities said they had already drawn attention of the State Government seeking filling up of vacant posts and upgrade the infrastructure.CDMO Chandan Murmu said the capacity of the hospital and the ICU must be enhanced as the number of patients has significantly gone up. The worst affected departments are medicine, obstetrics, gynaecology and paediatrics. At present, there are 332 beds in the hospital which are not enough for catering to the needs of the patients. “Now we have plans to install two more beds in the existing ICU and later on a new 12-bed ICU will be operational once the construction is completed,” he added.