Patients badly hit, staff don't turn up at hospitals

Healthcare suffered in the city in the light of all India bandh called by the opposition parties.

Patients said they could come in the morning, but found it tough to go back home.

“I came early morning as one has to reach the hospital early to avail services here,” said Naresh Chandra, who came to show his three-year-old daughter for dysentery to Kalawati Saran Children’s Hospital. 

But I have been trying for the past one hour to get an auto, but cannot get one, added Chandra. 

The rickshaw pullers, who take a number of patients from Ramakrishna Ashram Marg Metro station to the hospital, said activists from a political party came asking them to stop plying on road.

“We did not take anyone to the hospital for nearly one-and-a-half hour,” said a rickshaw puller. 

The patients had to walk for 200 metres in the sun. Hospitals also noticed a staff crunch.

Staff crunch

“Many of our staff members did not come due to bandh. Though doctors have turned up as they commute by their own vehicles, technical staff was thin,” informed a doctor of psychiatry in Lady Hardinge Medical College.

Officials in Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital said the number of patients in the outpatient department was half compared to a normal day.

“Delhi is reeling under heat wave conditions. Coupled with uncertainty of availability of transport, only the patients who stay nearby or had an emergency have come to the hospital today,” said the official.

Some officials said patients might not have come thinking that hospitals might also be shut due to bandh.