Berhampur's MKCG Medical College and Hospital needs more ICUs

By Ronalisa Parida

As MKCG Medical College and Hospital is one of the oldest hospitals in the state, everyday, people from across the ten districts of Southern Odisha visit the hospital and emergency cases from all the Private Health Centres (PHCs) and town hospitals are referred here.

However, the hospital has only four ICUs for the Department of Medicine apart from five respiratory ICUs for TB ward and a Special New Born care unit. Consequently, patients have to wait for long to get admitted in ICU, while emergency cases have to be referred to private hospitals often.

Shedding light on patients' concerns, Ayush, a patient's brother mentions, “Considering the daily footfall of the patients, more ICUs need to be constructed in the hospital,”

“Around 10 percent of the patients that come to the hospital everyday need to get admitted to the hospital. They are usually cases of Malaria, Sepsis, lung infection. As far as emergency cases are concerned like heart attacks, there is no other choice except for sending to other hospitals,” explains Junior Doctor of Medicine Department.

What adds to the woes of the patients and their kins is that there is no ICU facility in any of the private Hospitals in Berhampur. So the patients are compelled to go to Visakhapatnam or Bhubaneswar.

Recounting a difficult experience, Sunil Mohanty, son of a patient admitted in the Medicine ward recalls, “My Father was in a serious condition a couple of months ago when I had brought him to MKCG. But there were no ICUs available to admit him. So I had to take him to Bhubaneswar. Later he recovered, but everybody is not as fortunate as us.”

The ICU building under construction since October last year

It can be noted that a 20 bedded ICU block on the top floor of the medicine ward is almost ready. However, the unit lacks oxygen supply, and other essential facilities.

“Though ventilators have been arranged, there is deficit of oxygen supply due to technical difficulties. Besides, we don’t have sufficient staff to watch out the new blocks. In fact, recently air conditioners installed on the new ICU block were stolen due to shortage of staff,” explains Principal of MKCG Medical College Arun Kumar Dandapata.

It may also be noted here that funds worth Rs. 6.9 Crores have been sanctioned for a new Central ICU building in the Hospital. The Road and Buildings (R&B) Department has been assigned to construct the building in front of the Medicine Ward. Even though R&B started the work in October last year, the project has hardly reached completion. “There is a dysfunctional transformer on the site due to which the work is stopped. We have asked the SOUTHCO to shift it. After it is removed, work will start again and we will try to complete the building within end of this year,” Executive Engineer of R&B Manoranjan Tripathy assures.