Anantnag: Even amid this bone-chilling cold, children in need of nebulisation are being administered treatment in the unheated corridors of the Maternity and Child Care Hospital (MCH) here in Sherbagh area of Anantnag district.
The hospital being one of its kind in entire south Kashmir is frequented by thousands of people from not only south Kashmir but the Chenab valley region as well. However, for years now, the hospital has been facing a severe space crunch, where patients (pregnant women) are often forced to share beds.
“That obviously is a problem, but it is being managed somehow. At least the wards where these women share beds are heated,” sources in the hospital said, “but children being treated in the cold corridors, for ailments caused by cold, is an unbearable sight.”
The doctors at the hospital told Kashmir Reader that come winter there is a steep increase in the cases of chest infections among children, who then need nebulisation.
“The nebuliser is kept in the corridor and the attendants can be seen sitting on the cold concrete, holding the babies and children being nebulised. How the treatment will be of any help whatsoever is really hard to comprehend,” the doctors said.
Besides, the hospital building has long been declared unsafe by the Fire and Emergency department. In 2015, the Mufti Muhammad Sayeed government had ordered that the facility be shifted to the old building of District Hospital Anantnag (which is now the Government Medical College Hospital) which is lying vacant after the hospital was shifted to a new building.
“The facility was shifted for a day or two but then political meddling meant it was shifted back to the unsafe building,” sources told Kashmir Reader. “Some chemists and shopkeepers outside the MCH had objected to the shifting and the government conceded, without giving a thought to safety concerns and the inconvenience caused to patients.”
When the proposal failed, it was then announced that the hospital will be shifted to Rehmat-e-Alam Hospital in Sarnal area of Anantnag, which was being run by a private trust. It has been five years since and there has been no headway in that as well.
Kashmir Reader talked to the Medical Superintendent (MS) of the MCH, Dr Mirji Andrabi, who acknowledged that children were being treated in the cold corridors of the hospital.
“There is a severe space crunch and apart from that the building is totally unsafe,” Andrabi said. He expressed hope that the hospital will be shifted to the new facility in the next two three months.

Suhail A Shah