Tuesday, 12 April | Manisha Gupta | Rishikesh
Unavailability of medical consumables such as cotton, gauze pieces, gloves, syringes, painkiller injections is creating problems for the patients, their caretakers and the frontline medical staff of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Rishikesh. The patients coming to this prestigious medical institute are being asked by the hospital staff to make their own arrangements for these items.
On being asked by The Pioneer, one of the Nursing Officers of the institute said, “This has been going on like this for the past one and a half years. People like us who are working on the frontline face a lot of problems because of the dire shortage of medical supplies, which technically should be provided by the hospital.” Another nursing officer said, “In emergency cases, the moment the patient enters the ward, it becomes awkwardly necessary for us to tell his caretaker to bring the required items, because we are left with no other choice. Till the time they bring the items from the in-campus private pharmacies and sometimes even from outside pharmacies, we start the treatment with the remaining items that we had asked the previous patient to bring. And when they bring these items, we save some of it for the next patient, which somewhat creates a kind of chain. But there are times when we are not left with any stock, and the treatment gets delayed, which certainly becomes a factor that affects the mortality.”
Ashish Rawat from Pauri Garhwal, whose sister is admitted in AIIMS Rishikesh from the past one month asserted, “I am constantly asked to bring cotton, gloves and syringes. This creates a lot of difficulties as all these items aren’t available in the hospital premises; I have to go to the nearby medical shops in the area to buy them.”
When asked by The Pioneer the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of AIIMS Rishikesh, Harish Thapliyal, told the pioneer that the medical consumables are provided only to those patients who are BPL card holders.
