Editorial
Pangu hospital's woes
Its premises must be cleansed of dalals
LIKE any other public hospital, the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation (Nitor), popularly called Pangu Hospital, too, is in need of urgent attention from the authorities concerned. Though from its very name, Nitor appears to be a very modern and specialised hospital, media reports tell quite a different tale. In fact, it has become a den of fraudsters, who are everyday taking many innocent patients for a ride in the name of providing different services for them from the hospital as well as touting for other substandard private clinics.
It becomes further evident from the admission of the Nitor director, as reported in this paper, that though the hospital authorities are not quite unaware of the activities of the touts and tricksters on the hospital premises, they are helpless due to various constraints, including pressure from an ever-increasing number of patients seeking services of the hospital everyday and the shortage of doctors and hospital staff in comparison to the need.
Understandably, in the ocean of corruption, mismanagement and constraints of every kind plaguing the public hospitals of the country, the Pangu hospital is not an exception. But what defies commonsense is that the hospital's proud possession, the closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras, installed at different corners of the hospital, to all intents and purposes have proven to be of little help to control the tyranny of the outsiders harassing the patients and their relatives day in and day out.
Given the resource constraints of the government, further improvement in the services of the hospital is contingent upon the presence of adequate number of beds, staffing the hospital's various sections with more doctors, nurses and other support workers and, last but not the least, having sufficient quantity of medicine and other equipment in stock. But this cannot be an argument against making the best possible use of whatever men and materials are already at hand in the hospital.
Unfortunately, the hospital is not able to deliver whatever potential for service it already possesses, if only due to the mismanagement and corruption it is suffering from.
The authorities need to put their foot down in the matter. First and foremost, the hospital premises have to be rid of the dalals and fraudsters and their cohorts among the hospital employees. The CCTVs, if those are meant to be of any service, should be used to identify those troublemakers on the hospital premises. The next steps of cleansing the Pangu hospital of corruption and improving its service to the patients will only follow.
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