Srinagar: The attendants of children, being treated at the Pediatric Hospital in Bemina, on Friday said that they face severe hardships and inconvenience in absence of pharmacies near the hospital.
They have to either walk a few hundred meters or cross the bustling national highway to get to the pharmacies located on the other side of the road.
This 500-bedded Paediatric Hospital was made functional recently, and the existing one near Sonwar was closed down. However, the people visiting the hospital with their children allege that the hospital has been inaugurated in “a hurry without taking the basic requirements into consideration.”
“There is no pharmacy near the hospital, and it is an absolute taxing to get medicine. You have to often leave your sick child unattended to procure the medicine,” an attendant at the hospital told Kashmir Reader.
The other attendants, Kashmir Reader talked to, said that there was a Jan Aushadhi store inside the hospital but it remains overcrowded with people, making it almost impossible to get medicine in time.
“You have to either walk to the Hajj House, on the hospital side of the highway or you will have to cross the highway, which is absolutely dangerous in absence of a footbridge,” the attendants said.
They added that the chances that someone crossing over on the highway gets hit by a speeding vehicle are not far-fetched. “The authorities should have thought these things out before making the hospital functional, and closing down the old facility in Sonwar,” they said.
Things do not get easier even for people who come to the hospital in a private vehicle, for they have to make a U-Turn all the way in Parimpora – several Kilometers ahead of the hospital – to change the lane and reach the pharmacies.
“Having Pharmacies near the hospital is an absolute must and that too when it is a Pedriatic hospital. What if only one person is accompanying a sick child? Where is he supposed to keep the child till he gets the medicine?” the attendants rue.
People say that the authorities should have at least installed a footbridge if setting up pharmacies near the hospital was a time-consuming affair. “They have done nothing, thought about nothing in getting the hospital functional, just to be able to boast about it,” the locals and the people thronging the hospital said.
Kashmir Reader talked to the Medical Superintendent of the hospital, Dr. Nazir Chowdhry, who maintained that a Jan Aushadhi store has been already opened in the hospital.
“Besides, we are coming up with the Amrit store in a week’s time,” he said, “Setting up private pharmacies near the hospital, however, is not something that falls within my domain. The call on that has to be taken by the government.” (Ends)

Suhail A Shah